Next Stop: Unknown

We’d heard about these cool rock formations, called the “pancake rocks”, and they are of significant geological interest.  Evidently, layers of rock were somehow formed on top of each other in a way that still confuses scientists today.  There are several theories, but no one really knows how or why these rocks formed.  So, we had to go see them! 

The day was pretty crappy and rainy, and we weren’t too excited to get soaked, until we came across this sign!  Rob is a bit of a penguin fanatic, and his number 1 goal of the trip (after proposing) was trying to see these cute little guys.  So, when we came across this sign, let’s say we about died.  He hit the brakes full on as we pulled off into the grass to snap a picture.  Unfortunately, the road was wet, the grass was wet, and the car didn’t stop too well.  Another half second of sliding uncontrollably, and this picture would have been even funnier as our car would have been smashed into it!

New Zealand has some pretty interesting birds. Until recently, birds here had no natural predators… and thus they evolved to be flightless.  We saw countless varieties of flightless birds, but the only ones I remember the names of are the Kakapo, and the Kiwi bird.  This isn’t either of them, but looks like one that ran into our car and died earlier in the week.  Our car seems to have a knack for knocking birds actually.  I think in the 3 weeks of driving, we decreased the bird population of NZ by about 5 or 6.  Only 4 of those were my responsibility though.  Our car was a bird magnet!  Anyway, since new predators have been accidently introduced to NZ, many of the flightless birds are in trouble.  Extensive efforts in trapping and hunting these new predators is helping the birds a bit, but it’s going to take a lot of work to completely rid the island of them.

The pancake rocks were very cool indeed.  They are just layers and layers of flapjacks.  All we need is a little butter and syrup and we’ve got a meal!  It might be a bit crunchy though!

All smiles, even though we were frozen and could not feel our toes or fingers!

From this angle you can see the size of the rocks.  They were quite large, and covered a significant part of the coastline.  (That’s Jenn standing on the viewing platform). 

One of the coolest parts of this area, is that if you happen to be there at high tide, AND when there is a storm coming from the right direction… the rocks turn into a massive blowhole!  So, our foul weather turned into a blessing, as we got to see this one erupt while we were there!

We found the perfect way to warm up after freezing in the heavy rain – the Monteith Brewery Tour! Kiwi’s are very serious about their beer and seem to have a brewery in any town with more than 15,000 people or so. Monteith was the first brewery tour we’d braked for, and turned out to be our favorite beer of the trip. Everything there is batched brewed in open barrels and actually has a taste other than hops. Their style of brewing reminded me more of wine than of beer, with lots of different smells and tasting notes that you can try to pick out of the brew. Jenn was a big fan of their crisp apple cider or the lime flavored Radler, but I was most keen on their golden ale – it actually had a strong taste of ginger.

Two hours south of wine country is New Zealand’s preeminent water wildlife town – Kaikoura, where you can swim with dolphins, scuba with sea lions, go whale watching or take in a myriad of birdlife on the coastal walks. Helen and Rob had been talking about swimming with dolphins since we’d met up with them in Auckland, and Lucas and I were keen to try just about anything – until we realized that it meant waking up at 6 AM and swimming in water that was only 13 degrees warm. Brrrr! Just a week ago we’d been swimming in the 30 degree (Celsius) waters around Bali, I thought we might go into some sort of catastrophic shock in New Zealand’s cold waters. So Lucas and I left the dolphin adventure to Helen and Rob and we took off on a coastal walk.

Rob usually has problems swimming – namely, he doesn’t float. He said with his super insulated 7mm wetsuit though his buoyancy was a-okay. Doesn’t he look like he’s having fun?

They did get to see a ton of wild dolphins though. They’d swim up along side you doing flips and jumps. They were just as curious about what these strange overly insulated slow-swimming creatures were, as Helen and Rob were curious about them.

The weather was really blustery, so Lucas and I bundled up and set out for the sea lion coastal walk. We knew we were going to see lots of wild life when there were sea lions flopping around in the parking lot, and one had even crossed the parking lot and was sunning himself in the low hanging branches of an evergreen tree. Ridiculous! Even more ridiculous – that we were so saturated with sea lion that we didn’t even think to take a picture of him. Wish I had that shot now!

It was easy to get complacent about the sea lions when they were so prevalent. Most of the time they were just sunning themselves, or sleeping on the rocks. Get too close though, and they jump up on all fours and let out a mighty roar. Lucas and I decided to test the appropriate sea lion boundary a bit; I didn’t get too close before I chickened out.

I love the way the sea lions look when they are fresh out of the water and their fur is all ruffled and matted. Makes you want to just go up and snuggle with them!

I think birds outnumbered lions on our sea lion walk. We thought this black and white bird was a penguin at first glance. Does anyone know what kind of bird he is? We don’t either! But he was tall – perhaps as tall as my shins – and when he had his wings tucked in and was sitting on the rocks he looked just like a penguin.

We were in for a real treat on our walk and the area was home to a seagull colony and it was nesting season. Man the racket these suckers made! There must have been five-thousand seagulls nesting in the area and they all thought our arrival meant it was a good time to practice their squawking skills.

We got to see the gulls in all aspects of the life cycle – procreating gull-style, sitting on their eggs, and even dying. Several birdies had met the end of their reign and their bodies were just laying about. Guess gulls don’t burry their dead.

The gulls are really attentive of their mates though. You could tell which two were paired off and many times we’d see the male gull flying home with food in his beak for the lady gull that was waiting on the nest.

Heading back to meet Helen and Rob we climbed up the cliffs for a different perspective of the coastline. Even on a rainy, blustery day, the scenery was still beautiful.

After our week long spree through the North Island, it was time to head south and see what trouble we could find there.  We’d heard the south island was more beautiful than the north, but everything we’d seen thus far was so amazing, it was quite hard to believe.  The ferry ride over was a great start to the journey, giving us an idea of the landscape we were going to be spending the next 2 weeks exploring. 

Our first stop was a little place called Blenheim, in the Marlborough wine region.  Someone said it was Pinot territory, and I was excited.  Pinot Noir is my favorite!  However, I was slightly disappointed to find out it is mostly a white region… so, all Pinot Gris and Chardonnays.  I’m not a big fan of whites, but Jenn and Helen go grapes over them… so it was still a fun time.  And, most of the wineries still had a red or two for my palette.

One of our our first stops in the Marlborough region was a place called Cloudy Bay.  It is one of the more prestigious wineries in the region, and here we found a sparkling Pinot Gris that everyone loved.  Helen and Rob decided against buying a bottle since it was only our first stop, and wanted to wait and try a few out.  However, they spent the next two weeks trying to find one in the stores, and never did.  I’m sure they are kicking themselves now.

Even though I wasn’t a big fan of the whites, my palette was adjusting.  There were a few that weren’t so bad.  However, I did find something I loved.  Wineries make amazing photographs.  Everything in the region was made to be photographed. 

Beautiful clouds in the skies mixing white on blue, contrasting with the lush colors of the green hills… and perfectly aligned rows of grapes.  I took way too many to select just one favorite (Jenn took the one above). 

But, If I were going to pick a favorite, this one would be it.  I may have to frame it…

After visiting a few too many wineries (and a chocolate factory) we drove along the coast on the west side of the island.  We lucked out and happened upon a train going in our same direction.  The tracks ran along the coastline, through mountains, prairies, and over rivers… To be a conductor on this line must be heaven.  It was so beautiful.  The train was fast too… sometimes we couldn’t even keep up.  For about an hour we tried racing to a new place to position ourselves where we could get a great shot of the train going by.  We got lucky several times, but this one is our favorite and was taken by Rob, shooting out the window as we were pacing the train.  Charlie, this one is for you! 

Eventually, the scenery was just too beautiful not to stop and take a moment to enjoy.  So, we let the train go by, and found some time to sit and enjoy the sound of the waves lapping at the shores, and the wind blowing in the grass.

And the sea lions!  These guys where everywhere along the coastline drive.  Entire colonies of them would line up on the beach to bath in the sun.  They smelled something terrible… one of the foulest smells of all time.  But, they were also pretty cute!  If you were slow, you could sneak up on one and get pretty close.  But, having a nice zoom lens sure made it easier!

Another thing we were looking forward to was trying crayfish.  Somehow the Oz’s and Kiwi’s got it wrong… we call them Lobster.  Anyway, they were supposed to be in season, and the cold water “crayfish” should be widely available.  We checked into our hostel and went into town to try and find a few to devour.  Unfortunately, it was just after 6, and the entire town shuts down at 6.  Not only did we fail to find crayfish, we were barely able to find a place to eat! It probably turned out ok though, because we later found out that a crayfish meal costs around $65-85 bucks.  So much for cheap lobster… I miss the price of food in Asia!

We’ve traveled half way around the world, only to find ourselves in a city that looks exactly like Seattle (minus the Space Needle of course). Wellington is New Zealand’s capital and is located at the southernmost part of the North Island. It’s situated amongst rolling green hills and on a wide harbor. We’d planned two nights in the city – our first multi-night stop – so that we could go out to celebrate Halloween and not have to wake up bright and early in the morning to find our next hostel.

The hostels there were actually a real treat. We stayed at the Wellington YHA. It was a big college dorm sort of building right on the waterfront downtown. But the real appeal was it’s ‘5 Star’ rating. Rob decided that he doesn’t mind hostels, as long as they are ‘5 Star’ hostels – what a trouper! It was great though, there were two massive communal kitchens with all of the fancy cookware you could ever need. Each room had their own ‘bin’ to keep perishables in and they had a label system for keeping food in the fridge. There was instant hot water and all the tea and coffee you could drink. Plus, we could walk across the street to New Word – the Whole Foods of New Zealand and to Wellington’s famous Te Papa Museum.

We loved the Te Papa Museum. It had really fun interactive scientific displays like a house you can enter where an earthquake is simulated and a massive map of New Zealand that you can walk over and as as you step on different regions televisions replay the worst natural disasters they’ve had in that area. We also saw the largest intact squid in the world, the Colossal Squid!

One morning we drove up a windy road to Queen Victoria Lookout. This is really only half of the harbor, all of the multi-million dollar homes curl around from this point to the south, but here you can see the retail, office, and government districts.

Wellington has a huge amount of public outdoor infrastructure. There are playgrounds, skateboard parks, paint your own graffiti murals, and decorative fountains scattered through the city. One of our favorite areas was the public boardwalk that meanders along Marine Drive.  It was a great place to kill an hour or so while waiting for our Cook Straight Ferry. Locals use it kind of like our Alki Beach and we saw a lot of moms out pushing their babies in a stroller, couples jogging, kids riding bikes and people having impromptu picnics.

I’d never really given it any thought before, but since New Zealand is essentially two very large but nearly equally sized islands, simple train and truck transport systems are not enough to move goods through the country. Our ferry to the South Island has a whole floor dedicated to rail cars. The rail road actually goes along the coast, on the pier and directly into the boat were they can dismantle the cars for transport.

The ferry ride was awesome and totally lived up to its rap as one of the most scenic ferries in the world. It traveled through Wellington Harbor, which is beautiful in its own right, across the cook straight where the wind was just tearing, and then through the northern portion of the South Islands. You can see how crazy the wind was in the photo of Helen, below. Even if you weren’t up on deck enjoying the sites, the boat still had a lot to do. There was a full blown movie theatre (they were playing Star Trek), an arcade, a lounge, restaurant, a truck stop ?!? and then several indoor and outdoor observation decks.

We started taking a flurry of photos as we headed into the South Island. The islands appeared to be mostly deserted. Every once in a while we’d see a lone house – never a big house – but they always had a pretty formidable boat out front. That’s the only form of transport; we were even surprised that there was electricity. That’s how remote these places were. Wouldn’t it be great to have an entire island to yourself!

Helen and Rob had planned most of our itinerary, so I wasn’t exactly sure what the next few days were to bring.  As we drove through the countryside, seeing thousands of cows and sheep, we came to the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  I was innocent to what we were up against, until some tour guide met us at the start of the trip and told us that the weather was so bad that he was sending his group on a detour, and that we should reconsider our plans to make the crossing.  Evidently, up in the mountains the wind gets so strong it is difficult to stay on the path.  I found this a bit over precautionary, it was sunny and 50 degrees outside!  The weather was so nice!  So, we decided we’d go for it.  As we started the hike, we had someone snap a photo for us… just to show our spirits at mile 0.

The trek was boardwalked for the first 6km or so, and it was so well done, it must have taken ages.  The planks had this really nice rubber anti-slip grid affixed to it so walking was really easy. The views were phenomenal.  We were at the point where the lush greenery gave way to alpine scrub, so it was quite the contrast in colors!

After about 2 hours we rounded a bend and saw the old volcano looming up over us.  It was huge!  In fact, most of the time it was completely obscured by clouds… We thought the path would wind around the volcano and into the next valley.  No problems so far… in fact, we were sweating in our gear!  The weather was looking perfect for a long hike!

As the path kept winding around, we went higher and higher… and before we knew it, we were half way up the volcano and the wind and cold starting picking up.  The clouds rolled into us, and little specks of snow started falling.  Then, a huge fog came through and we couldn’t see very far at all in front of us.  At this point, we wondered if we should continue, as the weather was starting to get a bit serious.  We weren’t even to the midpoint of the trek, so to go on would mean a significant amount of risk if conditions worsened.

Magically, just as we were about to turn around, the skies cleared up, and it got sunny again.  We headed over the top of what we thought was the last “pass”, only to find out we weren’t even close to the top yet.

We walked through a very eerie section that was completely flat from the last time the volcano erupted.  It was like walking on Mars, little small rocks here and there, but nothing but mountains on all the sides around us.  In one direction you could see a huge volcanic cone, and the other directions, just mountains that formed the ring of a giant crater that we happened to be walking through.  Kinda scary to think this spot was at one point ground zero for a massive eruption.

The weather started to get pretty treacherous again, and we were trying to decide if we should continue over the pass to the lakes on the other side.  We happened to run into a couple of other hikers on their way back, and they said it was absolutely worth it.  Of course, we looked at their gear, and they were all decked out with cramp-ons, walking sticks, heavy coats, all proper mountain climbing gear.  Here we were with tennis shoes, no gloves, and 3 hats for four people.  So, of course we decided we’d give it a go, until it got too much and we  were forced to turn around.

We don’t have good pictures for the actual hike up this last bit, because we were all too frozen to take time to stop and actually use a camera.  The winds were blasting around 100km/hour, and they really did try to knock you right off the side of the mountain.  The path was virtually impossible to see, and with the wind, sleet, and freezing cold, we were trying to get to the viewpoint as quickly as possible so we could turn around and head back down the mountain.  But oh was it worth it.

The three lakes were brilliantly colored: blue, green, aquamarine… it seemed to change even as the weather patterns changed.  Off to one side the whole area was smoking with vents from heated areas under the ground.  We found a place to sit down which was partially sheltered from the blistery wind, and the ground was actually warm!  It was quite strange being so cold yet having warm soil beneath your feet.  We took a few moments to admire the natural beauty, then double timed it back down to a lower elevation.   All our fingers were numb, faces wind burned, and toes frozen…pretty much the exact recipe for one of Rescue 911 shows where they have to helicopter dumb tourists from the face of a mountain because they were ill-prepared.  Just kidding… it was miserable, but not scary or life threatening.  In fact, after about 30 minutes of our trek down the mountain, we were peeling of layers left and right to cool off… amazing the differences in temperature in just a small area.

One last shot of Helen and Rob looking over the valley towards the place where we had started the trek.  In total, we trekked 19km, walked through an active geothermal field, climbed up the side of a volcano, admired a beautiful ice crusted waterfall, and saw the colored alpine lakes of the Tongariro Crossing.  Not bad for a day!