As I am hustled off an airplane into the jet bridge, the 30 degree humidity greets me like an old friend. This time, though, it’s different.

I’m not left to my own devices to saunter through Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport towards immigration; I’m not even 100% confident my battered maroon passport will let me into the Kingdom of Thailand, and I don’t even get to walk by rows of tempting, gleaming duty-free bottles.

Instead, battalions of empty chairs greet me, as if in order to enter the country I’m going to have to sit an SAT exam. Hundreds of staff in blue hazmat suits swarm the new arrivals, seated six feet apart, and begin to examine their thick wads of documents, proffered like protective amulets against an invisible threat.

This is travel in the age of Covid-19, and the whole situation seems so unlikely I have to blink to make sure it’s real – I’m here. I made it.

*

Back in February I decided to accept a job offer at an international school in Phuket, Thailand. From our blissfully ignorant, snowy ivory tower, Covid-19 seemed to be under control in SEA and the consensus was it would be ‘over’ by the time I was due to arrive in August.

Obviously, that wasn’t the case. June came around and I booked commercial flights to Phuket only to have them cancelled a few days later, and after booking another round of flights, it was becoming clear that Thailand had not actually lifted its ban on commercial flights landing. Lucas nudged me into the realisation that in all likelihood I would not be going, and it was time to consider other options.

Then – during a trip to the Canadian backcountry with spotty cell service – I got an e-mail from the Thai Consulate in Vancouver. Repatriation flights for Thai people were still running, and I was on one, with a catch – I had to get my 14 day quarantine sorted out in Bangkok that day. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night in Thailand.

After an angst-ridden drive in and out of cell range, with multiple international calls, I was still no closer to fulfilling the requirements for the flight. The consulate assured me that it should be fine as long as it came through the next day.

After receiving the official permission to enter Thailand I thought I was in the clear, but the mandatory Covid-19 test proved another hurdle – due to the tightly-regulated, science-based approach of BC’s Covid management, it was almost impossible to get tested as a healthy person. I ended up calling a local clinic with a few mild ‘symptoms’. An extremely sympathetic doctor (thank you!) helped me to get the golden ticket, the lab report with a negative result – that came through the day before we had to leave for Vancouver. I have never felt that physically sick from stress in my life, and Lucas and the Karn family helped me in every way they could. I am so grateful, as without them I don’t think I would’ve made it here.

Despite the various travails of the whole process, saying goodbye to Lucas was by far the hardest part, and finally being issued my boarding pass was the epitome of bittersweet. I hope every day that the entry rules for Thailand will change by the end of the year, and that we can enjoy the island life together.

*

Thailand has been extremely strict with regard to its response to the pandemic. 3330 cases and 58 deaths, compared with the UK’s 308,000+ cases and 46,000+ fatalities. Of course other factors play a part, but the country has so far accepted the Faustian bargain of an economic nosedive in exchange for almost no Covid cases in the last 3 months.

Everyone who enters the country now has to quarantine for 14 days in a hotel aligned with a hospital, under close supervision, with limited (and sometimes no) opportunities to leave the room.

I am at a mid-range option, a Best Western Plus which have the reputation of being semi-fancy business hotels in Asia. It is day 14 of quarantine, 3 Covid-19 tests later, and I’m reminiscing on my experience of this unique moment in history.

The feeling of being bundled into the back of an unmarked van, partitioned from the hazmat-clad drivers by a duct taped plastic screen, was dystopian to say the least. I felt like I was patient zero in the biowarfare apocalypse, and any second my chest was going to burst open and splatter the partition with guts and a face-eating monster, or else I was going to merely turn zombie and start trying to smash the van windows.

What actually happened was that I was stuck in bank holiday traffic for 4 hours and then had my nose jousted by a disgruntled nurse’s extra-long swab. Which just goes to show that real-life dystopia is way more mundane than Hollywood would have you believe.

Quarantine has been a blur of sort-of-okay airplane food, way too much single-use plastic for me to sleep peacefully at night, alcohol cold-turkey and Youtube workouts. I’ve been trying to learn the Thai alphabet, and have learned numbers and a few basic phrases that will probably prove to be 100 times too formal for what people actually say in the real world. I’ve done a bit of reading and resource-gathering for school. I’ve watched a cute Netflix series (‘Never Have I Ever’), listened to podcasts, caught up with lots of friends, got despondent about the state of the US, done even more Yoga with Adriene than I thought possible, and slept a lot. On the whole, it’s probably not been bad for me, except the vague sense of unease about being unable to leave.

 

I get released tomorrow morning, to spend a few days with friends before heading to my new home in Phuket. I’m excited but a little nervous. What will it feel like to walk around in a city that is as ‘open’ as any place in the world could be right now? How will the concrete jungle feel after a year of bucolic Canadian living? Time to put on my mask and head out there.

 

 

 

A note from Kelly: here is a piece of writing I found and polished up from my trip to Nepal in 2017. I think it fits the ‘Alpine’ in Alpine and Brine. 

The Woman in Wool

Kathmandu, April 2017

 

Dressed in a traditional outfit, purple long sleeves with a teal wool waistcoat, matching woven skirt with a satin ‘apron’ of earthy toned stripes, the woman next to me on the bus had a calm, stately aspect to her. Around her neck was what looked like a coral necklace, polished smooth and pink. I tried to remember which tribe or ethnicity it was that I read about prizing coral for jewellery. I racked my brains. Maybe Tibetans? It makes sense, when you consider how far we are from the sea. Here, in landlocked Nepal, the roof of the world, the bones of a tropical reef are coveted gems.

 

When our rattling tin-can of a minibus pulled into a dusty, sty-like courtyard of a dingy roadside food joint, she turned to me and curtly but not unkindly announced, ‘breakfast’. I smiled in relief (because I was starving), and she returned a grin, revealing a bright, polished gold tooth. A few hours later, we stopped again and she turned to me: ‘lunch’.

 

She was perhaps in her 50s, with an angular face and kindly eyes that belied both intelligence and beauty. Her features recalled North American First Nations people, with sharp cheekbones and a straight nose. She sat quietly and with poise throughout the journey, at odds with the swaggering youth in charge of ‘managing’ our local bus from Kathmandu to the Himalayan foothills.

 

With dyed blonde hair, gold-rimmed hipster spectacles and a ripped denim jacket, it was as if he’d been plucked from the streets of East London, loud mouth and brash attitude to match. He shouted at various customers and played what seemed like his personal mixtape (a mixture of Bieber, Nepali music, Adele and thumping, jangling Bhangra) at top volume on the bus’s surprisingly bassy speakers. I surmised that more money was spent on the sound system than the suspension of said bus.

 

A few hours in, the German couple in front of me asked to turn down the volume of the music. Hipster Youth grinned belligerently, ‘No!’. The woman in wool next to me shook her head disparagingly and clicked her tongue. I immediately liked her even more.

 

The bus stopped frequently, sometimes more than once every five minutes. Huge bags of rice were hefted on and off the roof. Mothers with babies in slings squeezed into the aisle. When the bus was still, the air flow was non-existent, spice and other less appealing aromas wafting over us. Sweat beaded my neck. The lady next to me fanned her face and I followed her lead, rolling my eyes with her in solidarity.

 

We passed a large monkey sitting at a bus stop, looking for all the world like it was waiting for a ride, and she smiled and tapped me rapidly on the shoulder – ‘Monkey!’ She must not be from around here, I thought. She must be from the high mountains. That explains the traditional clothes, and her broad, strong looking hands that rested on the laced-covered seat in front of her. I wanted to confirm my reasoning.

 

‘Where are you going?’ I asked her. She paused to find the words. ‘By jeep’, she said. ‘Manang. Manaslu.’ Manaslu is an achingly beautiful peak of over 8000 meters. Perhaps she was from one of the settlements in its dominion.

 

‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘Kason Dhiki’ (it sounded like – probably horribly butchered in roman letters). I smiled and said nice it was to meet her.

 

After half an hour of rain and gushing roads threatening washouts, the bus finally pulled into Besisahar, the first stop on the Annapurna Circuit trail. It crawled up the high street accompanied by the usual showman bellowing of Hipster Youth. My friend Kason was having none of it – she gave him a sharp word and stopped the bus so we could all finally get off. ‘Take care’, I said as I went to retrieve my backpack. I hope her journey went well.

 

*

 

A few days later, I was trekking an impossibly steeply graded, rutted road that forms part of the Annapurna trail to Manang. Over 10 hairpin bends zig-zagged improbably up a shrubby hillside, the road strewed with small boulders and loose gravel.

 

The growling of a diesel engine alerted my trekking partner and I to a convoy of 4x4s crawling their way up the road. We jumped aside to straddle the berm, and as the second 4×4 roared past, a dark-haired, gold-toothed face caught my eye. Her eyes lit up with recognition. The woman in the wool! I grinned maniacally and returned her enthusiastic waving. And I never saw her again.

Places

We covered a lot of ground over our last couple weeks.  We started all the way down in the south island, where we had one last night along the ocean at a beautiful campsite at the end of a gravel road called Cable Bay.  From there we drove to Picton to catch our ferry north the next day.  Arriving in Wellington, we had a whirlwind night, before putting many kilometers in over the next two days to drive all the way up to Auckland with a brief overnight along the lake in Taupo.  Once we got to Auckland we took a trip with friends on a ferry over to Waihiki Island for a fun day trip.  From there we joined up with Brodie and Mason, along with some other friends, and had a trip over to the Coromandel Peninsula.  Once back to Auckland, we headed out to the west coast, to enjoy Mason’s family’s Bach.  We went there twice in the final week, before selling our beloved van and heading to the airport to depart this beautiful country.

 

Weather

Once again, we had some pretty terrific weather.  As we drove north from Wellington to Auckland we experienced some torrential downpours and heavy side winds that severely slowed down Harley the van. Luckily all the rain seemed to come during transit however and by the time we made it to Auckland it was once again clear sailing for a van that often lists in the wind.

Activities

Since we missed out on wine tasting the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, we joined Brodie and some friends for a ferry ride over to Waiheke Island. Waiheke is about a 30 minute ferry ride from the centre of Auckland but it feels like a world away. About 4000 people live there and most commute to Auckland for work. It’s famous for its green hillsides and vineyards, like the sleek, upscale Cable Bay winery (incidentally where one of Kelly’s high school friends got married), and the charming rustic-but-fancy Italian style Mud Brick, with picnic tables under olive trees and lavender beds where you can enjoy your tastings. It was a fun and fancy day and we got the ferry back after watching a picturesque sunset from the rooftop terrace of Mud Brick vineyard.

Our last road trip in New Zealand took us right back where we started at the very beginning of our adventure in November – the Coromandel peninsula, famed for stunning white sand beaches and clear swimmable water full of fish. It was a group road trip with our old mates Brodie and Mason, plus Brodie’s Welsh colleague Carys, and Aoife, one of Kelly and Brodie’s friends from Yangon.

Our first tourist stop was Cathedral Cove – if you google this spot, you can tell how spectacular the scenery is. For this reason it is also VERY popular with visitors, but as we were hitting it at the very end of the season it wasn’t too bad. To get there, you start high on a cliff with dramatic rock islands shafting out of the bluest seawater below you. We hiked over to the cove, which is named for the hollow arch of rock that the tide rises up through. The water we paddled out feet in was crystal clear and cold, but we all managed a quick dip on the less crowded beach past the rock ‘cathedral’.

 

Our second stop was the incredibly unique Hot Water Beach – Kelly is no stranger to ‘hot water’ beaches, having enjoyed the bath-like south east Asian waters for many years – but this was a whole different game. A geothermal spring runs under the sand on this particular beach, and at the perfect tidal moment, cold seawater flows up and mixes with the very hot spring water. If you dig a hole in the right spot, you can engineer your own spa pool/jacuzzi out of the beach itself, and lay in it and soak the day away. The only hazard is that sometimes a rogue blast of VERY hot water will wash into your pool, requiring you to shift your butt pretty quickly to avoid a roasting!

We also did a beautiful sunset drive up the dirt road to Port Jackson (you may remember we got a flat tire there in our very first week in NZ!). The sun was setting on our left side and casting all the gnarled Pohutokawa trees in a stunning red light. The next day we hiked a LONG (20km plus) out-and-back trail called the Coromandel Walkway that connects the east to west side of the peninsula (there isn’t a road that goes all the way around). This hike showcased the iconic landscape of the North Island and perfectly framed our trip – the green, rolling hills dotted with sheep, the dramatic steep cliffs covered with native bush, and the deep blue surf pounding the rocks below. Mason chasing after sheep (a kiwi pastime apparently) also cheered our spirits when the blisters from the long hike started to wear!

Food

We were once again treated to some amazing food at the batch.  Mason’s uncle Russ cooked up a massive curry in the garage in a pot large enough to cook a man whole, and Lucas made some fantastic garlic naan bread to go with it.  We of course ate more of the fish we caught out in the boat, with Mason smoking some of the snapper and a jack mackerel which came out delicious.

Lucas made some homemade pizzas out at the batch this time, and this time he really got them perfected. We also cooked up a final lamb roast as a final send off meal, and Brodie’s roommate made a tasty Kumara (NZ sweet potato) dish that was creamy and cheesy.

Highlights

One absolute highlight was a hike with friends in the Coromandel Peninsula into a beach called New Chums. The water looked tropical, and Lucas and Mason brought their spearfishing equipment, and Kelly brought her snorkel equipment.  We all swam out to a large rock island about 100 meters off the beach, which we circled around, making Kina bait bombs in the water and waiting patiently roughly 25 feet down in the water to try and have some of the large Snapper and other fish swim by.  We caught a smaller fish, but unfortunately the largest Snapper were not interested in us.  There were however, many different types of fish swimming through the tall weeds and it was a very productive underwater environment. We saw a couple large stingray and many cool coloured fish.

For last afternoon at the Bach with Brodie and Mason, we took some fishing rods down the beach to do ‘surf casting’. The Hart family enjoy buying old things and refurbishing them, and their latest acquisition was a broken golf cart that had just been lovingly fixed up and was now running like a dream. Of course, we decided the golf cart would be the perfect vehicle to ferry us down the beach with all the gear (and a cooler of beer) … She managed the loose sand surprisingly well, although we did have to wait for the tide to retreat on the way back as we weren’t sure if the electrics would take kindly to a dip in the sea!

It was a fun afternoon of catching little bait fish to put on our rods… and not much else! Lucas caught a few small snapper that we threw back. But it was a great time to hang out with Brodie and Mason, who never failed to make us laugh with their banter and antics (bantics?). The sun set beautifully over the Manakau harbour as we drank beer after beer and watched the rods jiggle with all the snapper that were eating our bait and somehow not biting the hooks…

 

Blunders

Okay, two blunders this time.  The first was a case of a couple of unwanted hitchhikers that waited for a door to be left open while we were cooking one night to claim our van as their new home.  They were two rodents, and they really drove Kelly batty, as she monkeyed about trying to fish them out of their hiding spots, while they tried to stay on the lamb, and Lucas horsed around the whole time.  A couple of mouse traps and a couple dabs of peanut butter eventually solved the problem, but not until after Kelly had a very sleepless night where she envisioned dozens of the squeaky little roommates running around and over us.

The second blunder occurred just as we were leaving Auckland for the Bach on a Friday evening.  We were all packed up for the weekend and had just left Auckland and were entering an on ramp onto the highway when Harley (for the first time on our entire trip) decided to just take an immediate break, and promptly removed to move or even start.  A lady behind us in the turn lane helped us push it through the intersection and onto the side of the on ramp.  From there Lucas spent almost two hours trying to diagnose what the issue was.  We couldn’t seem to get any ignition.  Eventually Brodie and Mason came back, after being over halfway to the Bach themselves. Mason towed Lucas the 3 or so blocks back to his parent’s house where the boys tried to diagnose the problem further until the night promptly crept up on them and they had to give up due to it being dark.  In the morning with fresh light and a fresh perspective Mason checked a small thing that the boys had neglected the night before and realized it was just a fuse that had blown.  With a 10 cent fix, Harley was on her way again and we were able to enjoy the rest of the weekend down at the Bach.

 

Wildcard

On our way from Wellington up to Auckland we stopped at a freedom camping spot along Lake Taupo.  It was a campsite we already stayed at twice, but we loved it so much we wanted to stay at it one last time.  It is basically a big area outside of the town, somewhat secluded on a beach.  The area can get fairly busy and there is just one long drop toilet for the entire area.  We had a nice walk before bed, and had a refreshing sleep.

 The next morning we went for another walk, and by the time we got back most of the previous night’s campers had departed and it was too early for the next night’s campers to arrive.  Lucas went to the long drop toilet.  As he was approaching a man in a large RV camper walked to the bathroom and then left leaving the door open and went to his RV.  Lucas went into the toilet and locked the door.  Unfortunately the outside of the door had a lock as well to keep the door from slamming with the wind.  The other man must have come back and locked the door, and either couldn’t hear or ignored Lucas’ call from inside of the toilet that it was indeed occupied.  Lucas heard the man walk away, get in his RV and drive off. Suddenly trapped like a rat, Lucas finished his original business inside the toilet and started looking for a way to escape his odorous prison cell.  He stood on top of the long drop toilet and was able to look out a gap between the tops of the walls and the pitched roof.  From his lavatorial perch he could look out upon what was now nearly a barren field; his options of a rescue seeming slim for the time being.  After what felt like quite a long time for Lucas, an elderly couple in a car pulled up on the far side of the field.  They got out and started walking down the road to Lucas.  Lucas called out to them, but his calls went unheard, as a strong wind seemed to be sending his cries for help in the opposite direction of them.  From his high vantage point Lucas crushingly watched them leave his field of view.  Feeling some despair he gave one final call for help to them.  A few seconds later the man appeared back in Lucas’ field of view, still searching for the source of the sound, which unknowing to him came from the smelly stall sitting on the far side of the site. Lucas called again and the man came over.
“I’m sorry to bother you sir, but do you think you could free me from this stinky prison; somehow I seem to be trapped in here?”
“Well you seem to have got yourself into a fair bit of trouble, let me help you.”
Lucas’ emancipator pulled the latch open from the outside, and Lucas refrained from shaking the man’s hand purely out of courtesy.
The two of them got talking and Lucas met the woman as well.  After exchanging pleasantries and a couple laughs, the man turned his attention to a more serious matter:
“Now that you are free perhaps it would be a good time to talk to you about our lord and saviour” the man said  to Lucas.
Lucas gazed down into their hands and saw many of the familiar Jehovah’s  Witness pamphlets that all too often accompany these well-dressed evangelicals.
Lucas, being hesitant to accept the literature, but feeling somewhat indebted to his rescuer, answered that normally he wouldn’t be very interested, but seeing as how the man had been his saviour, he could at least take the pamphlet home with him.
Which brings us to the point of this entire Blog…. To tell you about the great words of our Lord and Saviour……
Just kidding the controversial pamphlet was recycled with the rest of our pile at the next stop.
And that is how Lucas was saved from a terrible smelling outhouse by a pair of evangelical Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Goodbye New Zealand – Our Reflections

Wow – we really can’t believe 6 months flew by so fast. We felt like we saw a lot – but at the same time, that there was so much more to see. Talking to local kiwis, we had travelled to a lot more places than many had in their own country (as I’m sure is the case with UK or Canada tourists and us!).

We (and our relationship!) survived living together in a little tiny van, where our bed was also our dining table – if you follow us on social media you might notice that we have upgraded our mobile home to what feels like spacious North American luxury!

You’ve read about experiences we will treasure for the rest of our lives, like playing tag with dolphins in Akaroa Bay, and staying overnight in the golden tussock mountains. We came to appreciate the dry NZ humour and wonderful accent that makes the word ‘deck’ sound like something else entirely. We wished we had been able to complete one of the ‘Great Walks’ – the Milford Track is supposedly one of the greatest hikes on earth, you have to book ahead and they’re quite pricey – but we still felt we got to see a big slice of the beauty of that region. Another thing we wished we’d done was a scenic flight over Mt Cook – but hopefully we’ll get to fly over another alpine region at some point.

We also learned to appreciate the benefits of our countries back home – like the space and wilderness in Canada that means you can camp almost anywhere, instead of the highly regulated freedom camping that is the norm in New Zealand. We realise it is a product of the high volume of tourists, and is essential for conservation reasons, but we also love the simplicity (and cost effectiveness!) of the Canadian camping experience and can’t wait to get off the beaten track even more now that we’re back here. We also have a newfound appreciation for Vegemite.

You can continue to follow our adventures on here as we get settled in Canada (probably with more “alpine” and less “brine” for a little while) and a bit more infrequently. Tune into @wonderkelz on Instagram for daily occurrences and pretty pics.

 

Lots of love to everyone who read all, or any, of our ramblings!

Kelly and Lucas

Places

Last Monday we headed north from Franz Josef back to Greymouth on the west coast, and then north again to Westport along a winding coastal road with dramatic scenery, stopping at the ‘Pancake Rocks’ on the way. We paid a brief visit to the unfortunately named ‘Cape Foulwind’ and enjoyed a sunny day playing on the beach. From there we cut northeast to Nelson, the hip beer-producing town, where we met up with Lucas’ tree planting friends Amy and Matty, who are holidaying here from Australia. They joined us for our journey to Golden Bay, and we stopped off at a couple more interesting sights along the way that you can read about below.

We arrived at their Airbnb at sunset, and their hosts were kind enough to let us park in their driveway for the night. Saturday morning we drove into the north end of Abel Tasman National Park, and dropped our friends off near Tata Beach. We then drove deeper into the park, to the beautiful, sweeping beach of Totaranui Campsite, and spent the night surrounded by native birds. The next day we took a trip up to very top of the South Island (we sure like gravel roads, don’t we?!) and ended up with a stunning surprise. We have now left the Abel Tasman area to drive east to catch our ferry – it’s almost our last day on this island!

Weather

We are feeling the chill of autumn now, especially at night.  However, just today we were treated to a late summer sunshine boost, which felt great!

Activities

Interestingly, we visited two places this week where water welled up right from the ground beneath us! Rikawa Resurgence was a place we stopped for lunch with Amy and Matty. We walked up a path next to a stream, crossing under a carved Maori gateway that marks a sacred place. The river then bubbles up from a clear, dark pool which is actually a cave that descends under the hill into a vast network. Maori believe that the water comes up from the Earth mother Papatuanuku and would bless babies with it. The whole area was covered in moss and ferns and was really quiet and beautiful. Pupu Springs was another spot we visited, where some of the clearest, cleanest water in the world bubbles into a coldwater pool and drifts away down the river. The visibility of the water is over 60 metres, and people used to dive in it until the Department of Conservation banned any contact with the water, to protect it from invasive species and for indigenous beliefs. You can still gaze into the vivid blue spring and see plants growing metres below, and at the ‘Dancing Sands Spring’ we could see the sand eddying and swirling into spirals at the bottom of the pool where water was emerging.

Food

Our food highlight came courtesy of the pretty green bounty of the waters of Abel Tasman National Park.  After a day of snorkelling in the waters of the park we went for a hike along the great walk track.  It offered many vistas out into the National Park, and the coarse sand beaches almost looked orange.

We hope talking about mussels isn’t boring you by this point, but it sure isn’t boring our taste buds.  Kelly found some great mussels on an evening beach hike, and we brought them back to our van. We didn’t have a bucket so Lucas just wrapped all of them up in his shirt.  We gambled and took the rocky beach back, knowing it was low tide.  Along the way Lucas was jumping down from one rocky outcrop to the next when a fur seal pup stuck its head right out to give a bark for what he thought was his mom (spoiler: it was just Lucas). The little pup had quite the fright when it turned its head up and around to see Lucas nearly on top of him.  We unobtrusively walked around it and continued back to the camp.

But back to the mussels.  After they were soaked, cleaned, and de-bearded, Kelly cooked the mussels up in a delicious Thai Tom-Yum broth, served with a nice loaf of sourdough and New Zealand butter.  We talked about all the great meals we have had in this country and how silly it is that mussels that we have collected probably made up 3 out of the top 5 meals.

Other highlights include a mushroom risotto that Lucas made, and a tasty shakshuka that Kelly whipped up one evening.

Highlights

So we had travelled all the way to the far northern tip of the South Island.  As far as roads could take us at least.  We were on a giant spit that curved up to the northwest.  Although pretty, it didn’t provide much opportunity for walking, and the whole spit wasn’t much higher than the ocean.  It was getting near to dusk and we decided to chance it on a gravel road (a nice gravel road, not an evil one) for a few kilometres to the start of a brief walk into a beach called Wharariki Beach.

We started the walk through paddocks, winding our way over hills.  Then the trail shot down and followed a meandering stream until it came out on the most wonderful rolling sand dunes.  The dunes made their way down to the beach, which was a wide expanse with three beautiful  monolith limestone towers in the middle, two of them the size of a 6 story apartment complex.
The bashing of ocean waves had eroded large caves and holes through them.  Kelly’s highlight was a colony of fur seal pups that were playing in a little tidal pool.  We watched them as the golden hour light settled upon us and the rest of the beach, lighting up the green hills behind us, the red rocks around us, and bouncing perfect mirrored images of the setting sun upon the wet sand below our feet.  The spectacular moment made us feel reflective of our time on this incredible south island… as our time draws to an end and we leave back up to the north island in just three days.  We watched the sky dance long after the sun set, feeling a little like the South Island was bidding us a pretty farewell.

Also: kayaking!

We hired a double sea kayak from Tata Beach this morning and took it out for a spin. They are great little boats as the person in the back has a foot-pedal rudder that allows you to steer really easily! It was a cloudless, sunny day and with almost no wind; we set off in the crystal water to paddle around the granite rocks and limestone islands surrounding us.

We didn’t see the rare type of heron that lives here, but Lucas did spy a dark shape in the distance – was it an orca?! We paddled in close to find that it was a big fur seal, with an octopus in its mouth. Every few seconds he would stick his head out of the water, and slap the octopus against the surface to tear it up and munch on it! We were just a metre or so away from him and could hear him gobbling down the tasty treat. Kelly was enthralled as it was like Planet Earth but 3D, with Lucas narrating instead of Sir David. We saw a few smaller seals in the water, as we manoeuvred the kayak through a little arch in the rocks.

Around the corner we found a perfect cove with golden sand and the turquoise water that Abel Tasman park is famous for. It looked like a beach in Thailand – except no people – and the water is much, much colder!  Despite this, Kelly still climbed a granite boulder and jumped in, as it looked too inviting not to, and she knew that beaches like this would soon be a distant memory… Luckily the sun was out to warm her up! The waves were a little rowdier on the paddle back at lunchtime, but nothing we two salty seadogs couldn’t handle. We spent that afternoon reading our books on the beach with the waves lapping at our feet.

Blunders

After last week’s major blunder it is time for a more light-hearted mess-up this week.  Try as we might, we cannot find a place to drop off our garbage and recycling.  Three times we have visited a waste or transfer station, only to find it has some strange hours that we somehow just missed (Such as open only from 9-11:30am and we show up at 11:45, then we come the next day at 10:30 only to find it is only open from 2:30-4pm).  O well, in the meantime our van is started to resemble (and smell like) a garbage truck.

Wildcard

On one of our multiple quests to find a drop of point for refuse we stumbled upon an aptly named oddity called the Labyrinth Rocks. They were a whimsical maze of limestone rock corridors through a jungle like landscape.  They were peppered with little toys and trinkets in every nook and cranny (and believe us there were many).  The project was a novelty by a geologist named something Whitaker who worked hard for many years to map out the maze and tame the always creeping vegetation back.  After many years of work he opened the labyrinth to the public for all to enjoy.  He died a few years later, but thankfully some volunteers have jumped on board to keeping it going.  It was fun navigating all the corridors and getting ‘lost’ in the magic and whimsy of someone’s dream.

 

It’s been a busy two weeks, and things haven’t gone exactly as planned.  We’ve had ups  and downs, peaks and valleys, sunshine and well…  lots of rain. Lucas now has an injury, but we have had many happy experiences after finishing our jobs at the fruit orchard.

Places

We finished our jobs down in Kurow, and from there we made our way back up to Tekapo, where we did some hiking.  From there we spent a day down on Lake Pukaki for a nice sunny beach day.  The next day we went up into the Ahuriri River headwaters, where we ended up spending a bit more time on a fishing trip than we intended.  From there we did a crazy amount of driving.  Highlights included Rakaia Gorge, and a fabulous drive over Arthur’s Pass with a couple great hikes at the top. Then we finally made it to the west coast, where we watched a beautiful sunset in Greymouth, and then took the rainforest drive down  to Franz Josef, where you have finally caught up with us again.

Weather

The theme of this week was rain.  In fact a historic rainfall.  Over 1000mm (yes 1 metre) of rain in one 48 hour storm, which has to rank as likely the biggest either of us has ever experienced.  This was called a 1 in 100 year flood here (although those terms tend to mean very little these days).  Unfortunately the storm hit us when we were nearly  48  kilometres up a poorly maintained gravel road up at the headwaters of the Ahuriri River…. pretty much as far from any civilization as you can get in New Zealand, and also unfortunately basically right at the head of this incredible storm. We had to go over a few fords (dry river crossings) to get there.  By the afternoon we had got to the back of this tough road, and Lucas went down to the river to try his hand at fly fishing.  At that point it started to rain lightly, and the river was roughly 10 meters across.  It started raining harder and Lucas walked up the river past where the end of the road was to fish his way back down.  By that point the giant backcountry valley had started to turn black with a wall of rain being blown down from the mountains.  Lucas fished his way back down the river but promptly got soaked from head to toe when the rain finally hit fully.  He walked back to the van and we drove back down roughly 10 kilometers, figuring we had better get back down that section of road before the gravelled road got to wet and slippery.  The rain seemed to subside slightly so we decided to stay the night.  Lucas and Kelly fished until it got dark, and the water level of the river seemed to rise slightly over that time.  We went to sleep, and heard the rain slam into the side of the van all night.

By morning, we got packed up to leave, and pulled out onto the road, only to find that the banks of the river had overflowed, leaving a massive pond in the valley beside the river.  We pulled out onto the road, and made our way around the first corner, where we saw one of the dry river beds in front of us that was running fairly hard with water.

We thought that maybe we could still get the van through the ford, so Lucas got out to stomp around the flowing water.  He thought it was maybe too deep to cross, and so he walked back to the van, splashing through the flooded gravel road to assess the different water levels along it.  He was nearly back to the van when he took a step forward and immediately dropped hard through the muddy water, feeling a great impact in his leg and wrist.  Kelly came running out of the van to help him up, and she braced him as he limped to the van.  What had happened was there was a cattle guard on the road that was submerged, and Lucas stepped through the grates.

Luckily his leg was just a bit cut and very tender, and not broken as can happen very easily when falling through a cattle guard.  Unfortunately his hand took an enormous brunt of the impact somehow, and we suspect he has sprained some parts of his hand.

Kelly got Lucas quickly to the van, and tenderly, yet efficiently switched out his drenched clothes for warm ones.  Once Lucas was warm again, it was time to address the issue at hand. We both decided it would be unwise to try and cross the creek at that time, and our best bet was to wait out the storm.  Lucas was in a fair bit of pain, but nothing that needed immediate medical attention.

We decided to try and let the storm subside, but unfortunately for us, the storm only got worse.  All we could do was look out at the rained in valley and watch the Ahuriri River rapidly rise.  By midday, the entire width of the valley (easily over a kilometre) was flooded.  The valley looked like a huge lake that was flowing fast.  The ford we contemplated crossing earlier was now a no-brainer that we would not be able to cross.   Bored and a little sore, we could do nothing but wait in the back of the van.  We  never felt in danger from the rising river, as the width of the valley meant that an almost unimaginable amount of water would  have to  fall to raise the water up to the roughly 12 feet we were above it.

So we waited another night, hoping that the next morning the water would go down.  That night the rain finally stopped, and the next morning the valley was just cloudy.  Unfortunately, the ford was still flowing far too fast for our van to handle, and the road had been washed out enough that we weren’t sure we had the clearance to pass through it.  We also ran out of drinking water, although I am sure in a pinch we could have used the murky storm water.  Most worrying of all however was the patches of the road that turned into complete bogs.  We knew that they could take a long time to dry out.

By late morning the sun came out and started shining hard.  Combined with a swift wind, the conditions were great for drying out the valleys and in turn the road.  Then a vehicle came up the road and crossed the ford in front of us.  It was an old couple in a great big 4WD truck.  They were the only homesteaders up at the end of the valley, and they looked a little surprised to see us.  We told them of our plan to just wait out the rain until everything dried out again.  They agreed and told us to walk up the river and find them if they needed anything after warning us that the soft bits of road had a penchant for sucking in vehicles and then turning into concrete.  After all our trials we weren’t keen on getting the van stuck, so we waved them off and they continued up the road.  We contemplated whether or not to wait another night or try to go down the road before dark.  We waited and waited to decide, watching the road dry out by the hour.  By 5pm we decided to give it a try, and we used all the 4x4ers tricks to get the 2WD van back to civilization.  Miraculously, we made it through one problem section of road after another, and after about an hour, the road got much better and we were able to drive out the last 30 kilometers or so as if there had never been a rain storm at all.  Kelly made Lucas promise that was the last backcountry road we spent the night in until we own a 4WD truck.

We got back to the highway and drove south towards Cromwell, a roughly 1.5 hour drive.  We felt like we were 2 days behind now on a tight schedule.  When we got to Cromwell that evening we finally got into the land of cell service again.  We checked our phones only to read that we had made it through one incredible storm.  The bad news was it was so bad it wiped out sections of the highway on the coast where we intended to go, taking out full stretches of road as well as one bridge that will completely stop any travel for over 2 weeks until it is repaired.

So it faced us with a massive 900 kilometre backtrack, of which we have no choice but to do it, as there are no other ways around.  Kelly has done all the driving since we got out of that rainy pickle, as Lucas’ hand has been in bad shape. We scrambled to change our plans and came up with the activities you will read about below.  All in all it was one hell of an adventure, but it’s an adventure we are glad is behind us now.

Activities

Before our misadventure up the valley we spent a lovely day lounging by the beach at Lake Pukaki. We managed to find our exact camp spot from the first time we stayed there, and enjoyed some late summer/early autumn sunshine. We had a dip in the icy aquamarine water with the majestic, snowy bulk of Mt Cook in the background.

It’s not all lounging about! We have hiked some high hills these past few weeks, too! We met up with an acquaintance of Lucas’ called Tristan who took us up a hill near Lake Tekapo. It had an interesting observatory at the top with lots of telescopes for viewing the clear night skies. You could also see for miles around the dry, rain-shadowed landscape!

Crossing Arthur’s Pass, we walked up to a ski field called Temple Basin. We climbed up a jeep track at first, and then a rocky trail that lead into a big bowl with the ski huts in the middle. That was already pretty high off the highway, and we could see some of the glacier on the opposite mountain. Lucas had his eyes set on reaching the ridgeline, so we scrambled up what seemed (to Kelly) like kilometres of piled-up rocks, and scrambled up scree right at the end. Finally we did it, and we could sit on the ridge and look down at two huge valleys. It was very close to the continental divide, and the scale was epic. We were even treated to the clouds clearing as we made our way down, and a full view of the biggest peak in the area across the road. We climbed about 900 metres in total. We found out that the ski hill is only accessible by the trail we hiked up. There is a pulley system for getting gear up to the top – but not people. We had never heard of a ski hill like that before, it seemed not for the faint of heart!

The day before, we also did a short evening walk to a beautiful waterfall in Arthur’s Pass called Devil’s Punchbowl. There was a stepped creek below it and a rainbow arching over the pool. There are so many tranquil spots like this around!

Driving down the gorge that leads out of Arthur’s Pass, we arrived at the beach in Greymouth, and the sun was just setting over the water with a beautiful pastel hue. There were a few surfers out enjoying some fun little waves, and we sat for awhile and watch the sea. It felt strange to have been so high in the mountains and then at sea level – but the road down the gorge was extremely steep! (16% grade)

Food

We made a fantastic mushroom risotto, that Kelly masterfully prepared.  Since Lucas’ hand injury she has been doing the lion’s share of the cooking, driving, and chores.  What a hero.  Kelly also made some fantastic mushroom  burgers.  We bought a couple of pizzas when we arrived here in Franz Josef that put a wonderful cap on a week of pretty good eating.

Blunders

If the rainy story above doesn’t consist of the blunder of the week, I don’t want to know what does.

Wildcard

As we drove through Arthur’s Pass we came up to a place called Castle Rocks, which was this whimsical array of massive boulders scattered across the rugged landscape. Formed by eroding  limestone, each rock seemed to have a personality of its own, and we had an amazing game of hide and go seek.  You could get lost in all the little nooks, crannies, and outcroppings, and we loved the confusing nature of the place.

 

 

If you are following us dear reader, then we have some sad news to share with you.  The inevitable finally happened and we both succumbed to the monetary squeeze.  Yes, it is true, we have caved and got jobs.  That’s right, we are working stiffs again.

Places

Before we started our jobs, we managed to squeeze a quick and profound trip up to Lake Ohau again, where we were treated to some phenomenal weather and stars.  And after picking up Kelly we made for the coast and found one of the most beautiful ones we have witnessed so far in New Zealand (just south of Dunedin), as well as an interesting beach that had these perfectly spherical boulders on them called Moeraki Beach. From there we made our way over to Kurow (via some giant rocks) where we rented a house and started our jobs at a stone fruit orchard, where we have been picking and packing plums, apricots, nectarines, and the occasional peach. The landscape around is breathtaking, with large, arid mountains on either side of the Waitaki Valley, and the large meandering Waitaki River winding its way through the middle.

Weather

It has been unseasonally warm for this time of year this far south, and we’ve been getting a lot of sunshine. We have had a few cooler days interspersed and one morning there was even snow on some of the hills.

Activities

Well the main activities have been picking up plums and putting them in our baskets, but we have squeezed a little bit of fishing in here and there.  We managed to have an incredible night under the stars up on Lake Ohau, where we once again were treated to calm, sunny weather, and at night the stars came out and displayed a magical show of the milky way spilling out from the zenith to the horizon.
We also managed to squeeze some walks and runs in after work. In two weeks of work we only got one day off, so we went down to the town of Oamaru to pick up groceries.  While we were there, we went down to a beach called Bushy Bay, which you can read about below.

Food

Lucas has been dehydrating plums and apricots every night overnight, one of the fringe benefits  of working on a stone fruit orchard. He also made a fantastic pizza on homemade dough one night.  On our day off Kelly made a shakshuka for breakfast one morning that Lucas claims is the best thing he has eaten in a ‘while’.  All in all it has been nice to have an oven again and a well stocked kitchen.

Highlights

We had to go about 60km to the local town to pick up some non-frozen groceries (the local shop is pitifully understocked!) and we stumbled upon ‘Bushy Beach’, signposted as a nesting ground for yellow-eyed penguins. We decided to change our plans and head down to that beach. It was a sunny day, not too windy, and the sea was glowing a bright turquoise. We saw NZ fur seals tumbling around in the water, and walked to the penguin viewing area but the signs instructed us that penguins could only be seen later in the afternoon. We settled down on the beach to read our books just a few meters away from a big, snoozing lazy seal who paid us no mind but did smell quite strongly of wet seaweed! It was nice to enjoy some sun and watching the waves crashing in the kelp.

Blunders

I guess our blunder would have to be getting jobs.  What were we thinking?  In all seriousness, it’s not that bad though, and it will be nice to get a little cash in hand to finance the tail end of our trip here.  The work can be repetitive, but it has been nice to  be able to rent a house right on the orchard and be able to cook in an oven again and have all the modern facilities at our disposal.  We also have a full sized bed which has been quite luxurious after squishing into a van for so long.

Wildcard

An impromptu birthday party! One of the French orchard workers, Claire, had her birthday on Friday so we decided to host the party at our orchard cottage! (Funnily enough Claire was from Honfleur in Normandy, one of the places Kelly visited on a high school field trip). Many a delicious dish was cooked, from stuffed homegrown courgette (zucchini) to vegetarian lasagne, samosas, soup, and a French layered dessert cake flavoured with coffee. It was a lot of fun and we listened to music and played party games far later than we should have, considering we had to wake up at 7am for work the next day!

 

For the last two and a half weeks the dynamic duo of Alpine (Lucas) and Brine (Kelly) have been separated.  Kelly took off to Yangon, Myanmar where she has lived for the last four years, for a trip to see her dear friends, while Lucas stayed behind and looked after the van (and got into a fair bit of fun as you will read).  The following is Lucas’ account of his bachelor time, followed by a blurb from Kelly about her trip at the end.

Places

After dropping off Kelly in Dunedin, Lucas made his way north where he stayed a night on the ocean of the east side of the Island.  From there he made his way to a small town of Duntroon where he spent a couple days fly fishing.  After that unsuccessful attempt he made his way up to the relatively secluded area of Lake Ohau in the foothills of the Southern Alps for some peace, quiet, and introspection.  After a few very restful days he drove to Queenstown where he picked up his Kiwi friend Mason from the airport, and they proceeded to hike into the backcountry to the iconic Greenstone River for a couple days of fly fishing.  From there they made their way south to another famous fishing river called the Oreti for one last try at fly fishing in the backcountry.
After that Lucas took Mason back to the Queenstown airport and made his way back to Lake Ohau (he couldn’t get enough of this little gem of the south).  Then he made his way back down to Dunedin for a much anticipated reunion with Kelly.

Weather

Lucas suffered some cold nights while Kelly was away and highly missed the ability to snuggle with someone warm (Mason’s cuddles weren’t the same).  The temperature unseasonably dipped down to around freezing level, but it made for some beautiful snow tipped mountains surrounding him, especially in the Southern Alps.  Lucas and Mason experienced some strong winds while fly fishing which weren’t ideal, and one day they got absolutely drenched with rain, but all in all the weather was quite pleasant.

Activities

Fishing, fishing, fishing.  That has been the main activity keeping Lucas busy the last couple weeks.  He bought a new fly rod in Dunedin, and the irony wasn’t lost on him that he now has three different rods in New Zealand despite only having two arms.
The art of fly fishing is something that was quite pleasant to rediscover, as Lucas had gotten into it a bit when he was younger but hadn’t tried his hand at it in a long time.  The main method he has been using is called spot fly fishing, where you attempt to find the fish by spotting them in pools and in shady spots and rapids, and then you drop your fly into that area.  It was a tough learning curve at first, where a lot of flies were lost to trees and shrubs in and around the rivers and creeks.  After a while though, Lucas noticed a big difference in his skill, and was able to consistently drop his flies into the pools and ‘honey holes’ where the fish like to live.
On the first day he and Mason where fishing, they went down to a lake to fish, and Lucas caught a small (roughly one pound) salmon that they ate for dinner that night.  Mason caught a small rainbow trout, but threw it back after we already secured a meal for the night.

The next day we took the long hike up into the Greenstone Valley, high up in the backcountry of the southern edge of the Southern Alps.  It was a long hike with full packs, and after a 16 km day we were happy to take our packs off and do a little fly fishing in this majestic river.  Unfortunately the wind was pretty strong that day, so it stifled most of our efforts.The next morning we woke up long before the sunrise and hiked up into the higher reaches of the river.  Because of the steep valley walls it was late into the morning when the sun actually poked out above the mountains. We spent many hours finding the perfect spots, but by the afternoon still hadn’t got a bite.  Then we found a particularly beautiful winding section of the river and we decided to wade out into the middle to try and reach the far shores.  Lucas cast his fly to the far bank and pulled it into the river.  With a plop it dropped in, and but a moment later the water furiously churned and boiled.  Lucas set the hook and immediately saw a very, very large Brown Trout fighting hard to break away from the hook.  Lucas fought with the wily fish hard for a couple minutes, the fish racing up and down the river looking for any where it could find to break the line.

Eventually, Lucas got it up close to his body in the center of the river, while Mason fumbled to get their only net from where he was up river down to Lucas.  Lucas couldn’t believe the size of this Brown trout, some in New Zealand can get as big as 55 lbs.  Although this one wasn’t nearly that big it was still likely the biggest fish Lucas had ever hooked.  And just as it seemed the fish had ran out of steam and was ready to get pulled in the last couple feet, it charged down river, snapping and twisting and jumping out of the water.  And as fast as it started, that clever old fish had snapped Lucas’ line and was gone.  Lucas and Mason didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, but in the end it was a pretty fun experience.
Later that day on the long hike out, Lucas and Mason stopped in a particularly juicy looking hole, and Mason caught a small brown trout that they happily ate for their dinner that night.
All in all the two of us had an incredible time on our fishing trip, seeing parts of the country that few get to see, and for Lucas, the trip rekindled a love of fly fishing that had been lost for many years.

Lucas also had a lot of time for rest and introspection after Mason left, and at Lake Ohau he was able to write a couple new songs that he is really happy about.  He also got a chance to write some poetry every day in the poetry book Kelly got him for Christmas, as well as play many games of online chess, and finish a book he was really into.  So all in all, it felt like a pretty healthy time to be by himself and work on some projects he had really been looking forward to getting into.

 

Food

Perhaps not surprisingly, the fish were the main culinary attractions over the last couple weeks. Just a day before Kelly was set to come back to the south island, Lucas was spin casting on a canal near Twizel when he caught a beautiful 3.5 pound salmon.  He sneakily waited until Kelly got back and then pan fried it with butter, lemon, salt, pepper, and of course the secret ingredient of cheap local beer.  It was the same way he cooked the fish he caught with Mason and both times it was simply delicious.  Also while he was alone he developed a maddening addiction to a spinach salad with a very simple lemon and olive oil dressing, which he dutifully ate almost every day that Kelly was gone.

Highlights

Fighting with that monster of a brown trout has to have been a highlight, but also sticking out in memory is just having some quiet time around Lake Ohau.  One day Lucas made his way down the beach and spent the morning building a grand art project out of driftwood and boulders which took up the whole beach.  As the winds around this area can often reach speeds of over 100km/h, he found it interesting to return to the same spot 10 days later and see how it had all basically disappeared, illustrating the impermanence of the act.

Blunders

While fishing the lake, Lucas and Mason were casting off a pier.  They tried switching rods, and as Lucas is left handed and Mason is right handed, Mason switched the reel on Lucas’ rod.  As he was putting it back together he dropped the reel mechanism of Lucas’ through the cracks of the pier and into the deep water below.  Mason attempted to dive down and recover it, but it was to no avail.  Oops.

Wildcard

Lucas did a solo hike while he was in the Alps, where he hiked from a valley floor up onto a mountain ridge line and followed it.  He had planned to spend a night up there but the temperatures were hanging around zero, so he navigated his way along a parallel ridge line in the late afternoon, making his way back towards the van.  He was getting pretty tired of a long day of hiking when he came around a corner and found an old mountain 4×4 road.  And right at the top of the pass was a truck with some guys sitting outside taking pictures.  Lucas came up and said hello to them and they looked shocked that a person would be hiking all the way out there.  They offered him an ice cold Speights (the beer of the south island) and a ride down the hill and Lucas happily accepted both.  He had some good laughs with them as they delivered him right to the front door of his van.

All in all it was a pretty great couple of weeks here without Kelly, but in the end Lucas was really missing her, and is so happy to have his adventure partner back on the road with him.  Now here’s a little excerpt from Kelly’s time away:

 

Return to Yangon

 

Kelly had a fulfilling and nostalgic time returning to her friends and neighbourhood in Yangon for 2 weeks. On the way over, she was lucky enough to transit overnight in Bangkok, where her friend Zach has just moved into a house with friendly flatmates. She arrived on their doorstep late in the evening, but in time to make a sketch for their ‘creative night’, where he and friends were getting together to make art, music and hang out.

The next day it was an hour hop-over flight to Yangon, where she soon began to make the most of little luxuries of South East Asia she’d missed – getting her nails done and catching up with Ben over rooftop sunset cocktails. As luck would have it, the next day was Kelly’s housemate Adela’s birthday, so they celebrated in style at a rooftop bar downtown, followed by an after-party until the sun came up at her friend McKenna’s. It was a joy to see all her friends together in one place, too many to name drop here, and it felt like no time at all since she had seen them last – she even stayed in her old bedroom!

Kelly spent her days in Yangon catching up with friends over delicious food in the evenings, and chilling out with her dearly missed friend Jake during the day in coffee shops (who always managed to seek out the coolest aircon and the fastest wifi). She squeezed in a day by the pool with fellow sun worshipper Maxe, and a night of candlelit yoga in a gallery space with yet more friends. She met the street dogs Denise and Jake have adopted; they feed them every day and get showered with canine love in return. She saw what had almost become invisible to her when she’d lived there – the beauty and the chaos of a developing city, with pockets of jungle hanging on everywhere you turn.

Unfortunately, the pollution was at its height and a dusky pall clings to the city, despite the blue sky overhead. Playing Frisbee with her old club, people commented how they seemed to notice it more when they ran outside now. Online, the air quality indexes for Yangon are damning and it often ranks worse than its neighbouring metropolis, Bangkok.

Yangon still felt like home. But many of Kelly’s friends are preparing to strike out on new adventures, so they won’t all be there forever. It’s certain that no matter where those people are in the world, she’s made friends for life, and Myanmar will always have a stake in the landscape of her soul.

*

And here is the glorious Mt. Cook as photographed by Lucas:

Places

Wow – we’ve seen a lot of places since you last heard from us! We entered Fiordland, hiked to the pristine alpine Lake Marian, and made the pilgrimage to Milford Sound. We freedom camped on the peak of the Crown Range, hiked near Wanaka with a friend from Wellington and passed through Queenstown and Glenorchy, both mountain towns with magnificent backdrops. Entering gold rush country, we stayed at an old mining encampment called Gabriel’s Gully, and back to Dunedin for Kelly to catch her flight back to Auckland in preparation for her trip. Today’s blog is an international collaboration, as Kelly is in Yangon visiting friends until the end of the month, and Lucas is living the bachelor van life until she gets back. That’s why we’re a bit short on photos this week.

Weather

We had some good weather, except for some unexpected nighttime rain which you can read about in the last section of this blog…

Activities

Our primary activities this week have been some VERY scenic driving, coupled with some beautiful day hikes. Our hiking boots, which were new this summer, are taking a beating!

Upon arriving in Fiordland, named for its dramatically steep glacial valleys, we impulsively took a late afternoon hike up to Lake Marian, which Kelly had heard of from her avid following of ‘outdoor influencers’ in Instagram (it has its uses!). Billed as a 3 hour return, we managed to scramble up the shady, rocky trail in just one hour and reached the lake with a handful of other hikers as the sun was hovering over the sheer rock walls that surrounded it. Perfectly framed by precipitous slopes, it reminded us of glacier lakes back in Canada. A valley curved away behind the lake, and the surrounding peaks still had stubborn snowdrifts clinging to them. We quickly stripped to our skivvies and dived in the cool, refreshing water.

The next day we woke up early to beat the crowds who flock to Milford Sound in tour buses from Te Anau and even Queenstown, which must be an 8-hour return drive at least. Luckily, we were camping at a spot about an hour away. The Milford Road is renowned for its improbability and jaw-dropping scenery – a new, huger cliff or hanging glacier greet you around every curve. We had no idea that the road would be so epic, and continued to gasp in awe and surprise for the entire drive. Then, the finale – a roughly-hewn tunnel through the SOLID ROCK base of a gigantic mountain wall. It was a thrill, and Harley and Lucas handled the climb and descent with finesse!

In Milford Sound we were incredibly lucky to see the famous vista of Mitre Peak, the ocean channel and the surrounding peaks with perfect blue-sky clarity – some kiwis have been there and never seen the top of it due to the mist and rain that the area is famous for. We quickly realised that the way to see the full extent of the Sound was either by air or sea – and since the scenic flights were far out of our budget, we booked a ‘cruise’. Although it was a busy boat, the breathtaking waterfalls that cascade hundreds of feet down from valleys hanging far above the water was a sight we were lucky to behold. We also got to see some seals sunbathing on the rocks (and jostling for the comfiest position!), and a myriad of different views of the stunning area. We learned that Milford Sound is actually a fiord, not a sound! This is because it was glacially carved, and not eroded by water, like a sound is.

After the cruise we drove back along the Milford Road until a C-shaped valley, backed by a cliff of rock with icy meltwater flowing hundreds of metres down, caught Lucas’ eye. We had planned to hike a challenging climb called ‘Gertrude Saddle’, but Lucas saw a promising route up to the top of this ridge and asked Kelly if we might want to climb this instead. Kelly was somewhat hesitant as there was only a path around the base of the meadow, and no marked trail up to the heights, and the small matter of a ‘Danger: area closed’ sign… But it was ambiguous what that was referring to, and Lucas was very enthusiastic about another opportunity to hike off-piste, so she agreed to give it a shot.

As Lucas bounded up the piled-up rocks like a mountain goat, Kelly made her sure and steady way up behind him. Soon, the whole valley view opened up into an expansive, rugged vista. As the way up seemed to get steeper and steeper, and the feeling of being on the edge of a huge chunk of rock became more and more intense, Kelly began to feel that clinging to the side of a behemoth of granite wasn’t really her favourite activity for that day. After a bit of a panic she sat in a safe spot while Lucas took 20 minutes to leap up to the peak, snap a panorama of the vast views from the top, and head back down to where Kelly had been composing some scenic poetry about the beautiful view she could now enjoy from a solid perch. Back at the van, she was glad she tried! We enjoyed the wonderful scenery on the road back, and parked under some vividly bright stars for the night.

The next day we chose a free camp spot that was high up on a mountain pass in the Crown Range near Queenstown – we were afforded an incredible view from our rear window back down the valley, with a golden sunset followed by the twinkling lights of the town at night.

We were not great fans of Queenstown, which had a bit of a theme-park vibe with hundreds of tourist tours and souvenir shops around. It’s clear to see why it’s so popular though, being right on the lake with such a dramatic backdrop.

Food

We had a GREAT burrito from a food truck in Wanaka. We don’t often eat out as we are mindful of our budget, but a friend had recommended it, and boy was it good. It inspired us to make them again (more on that later)

Highlights

A highlight for us this week was getting to hike with a friend we had first met in Wellington, Thomas. He was down South for a holiday, and advised us to eschew the famous Roy’s Peak hike (where you get an expansive view of Lake Wanaka), and to try the Isthmus Peak hike with him, which affords similar views from the top, but without all the crowds. The hike was a grinding uphill climb along a rugged 4×4 road for most of the way, but at the top we wove through tussock grass to a lookout across Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea on opposite sides of us, and even some shiny fresh snowfall on the higher mountains across the way. At one point it looked like rain was imminent, but when we reached the top the sun showed itself and dappled shadows ran across the tussock landscape – very worth the rather arduous climb! We cheers’ed Thomas and our success with a beer and the aforementioned burrito back in the lakeside town of Wanaka.

Wildcard … and Blunder

One unexpected adventure this week was our attempt to find a camping spot at the far end of the lake in Queenstown.  We saw a place on the map called Chinaman’s Bluff, which was as far as the roads would take you up into the southern alps.  At the end of it was an alleged camping spot that lacked any reviews or details whatsoever.  Intrigued, we ventured out to try and find it.  The paved road ended shortly after the town of Glenorchy, and from there we made our way along gravel to a place labelled  ‘Paradise’, (Lucas noted that towns with names like that were usually given ironically to places no one really wanted to be, but this place was actually quite nice).  For a while we wound our way up a road that still seemed connected to civilization as there was the occasional farm, and a surprisingly large number of 4wd tour buses that were showing off some of the filming locations of the Lord of The Rings films.  Eventually however, even that semblance of civilization petered out and we were left on a long neglected back road.

We kept climbing and eventually came to a spot in the road that probably should have ended our journey: a small creek crossing.  Lucas was hesitant to cross, but not nearly as hesitant as Kelly, who wanted no part in the crossing. After wading through all parts of the creek, Lucas (much to Kelly’s chagrin) got in the car and drove through the creek.  It ended up being not too challenging to cross, and we came to 6 more crossings that we made through water.

Both of us were aware of the ability of these water levels to change rapidly with coming rain, and we sure didn’t want to be stuck on the side of those creeks that weren’t attached to modern civilization.  With a perhaps naïve mindset, Lucas convinced Kelly to stay the night as the place was admittedly very beautiful, and besides there hadn’t been rain in quite some time. We were surrounded by massive snow-capped mountains with a beautiful pale green river weaving its way right through the middle of the valley.  We parked the van in a field right by the water, excited to have this little paradise all to ourselves.  We opened the door to set up camp and immediately realized our isolation wasn’t nearly as complete as we had hoped: swarming us from all directions were hundreds and hundreds of sandflies.

We went down to the river to take a picture, but could hardly even snap one, as there was no way to swat all the places on your body fast enough to keep up with the new sandflies that were landing and promptly biting us.  We made a hasty retreat back into the van, closed the doors, and decided to pass the time by playing a scrabble-like game called Bananagrams. We got about five minutes in, when Lucas called a pause and we looked around to find still hundreds of the little monsters inside our van.  They were getting in through the tiny cracks in the roof vent and Kelly and Lucas spent the next twenty minutes sealing up holes and killing many scores of the awful creatures.
We felt trapped in our own home, unable to escape.  Luckily we had one way to pass the time:  making the biggest and best burritos we had ever had.  After they were loaded with refried beans, fish, rice, avocado, chipotle mayo, cheese, jalapeños, cilantro, hot sauce and lime, Lucas grilled them to perfection on the stove top till the outside was crisp and brown.  We hungrily snarfed down perhaps 5 pounds of burritos between the two of us and lay down for a long nights rest.Or so we thought it would be a long night’s rest.

Once we got settled down in bed the rain started to come down in a slow pitter patter, which gained traction into a steady rain, and then finally building up to a full on downpour.  Lucas sat up in bed, stressed out all night that we weren’t going to get back along the road, and mostly concerned that Kelly would leave him up in the woods with the bugs if she missed her flight that she needed to catch in two days and was a day’s drive away.

He got up in the night 3 times to check the water level of the river and how sloppy the field they were in was.  Finally in the complete dark of night at 3:45am, after not sleeping a minute all night, he woke Kelly up, and asked if they should move.  She agreed sleepily yet promptly, and Lucas jumped out, packed up some stuff under the bed Kelly was still lying in, and drove the van through the muddy field in the pitch black of a hard raining night, all while Kelly held down the fort in the bed in the back of the van.
We got to a drier spot and decided to just wait it out till morning.
When it eventually came, the skies cleared up and we sleepily drove down the road to the first creek crossing, not sure what to expect.  Thankfully the levels had already dropped back to fairly close to what they had been the day before, and we were able to cross all of them with relative ease, making the long but beautiful drive back to Queenstown and then carrying on through rolling hills with large weathered rocks scoured everywhere, on our way to Dunedin and Kelly’s flight.

Here are some of Kelly’s haikus from the mountainside:

Ossifying snow
Runs through its petrified skin:
The white mountain veins.

Eater of the earth
Gouges out with blue beauty;
Now her power wanes.

Chalk white rock flower
Rooted in a boulder sea:
You gentle anchor.

Places

We last left off at the very southern tip of the south island.  From there we made our way west for some surfing and beachside fun around Riverton.  A very short jaunt from there led to Colac Bay for some of the prettiest freedom camping we’ve experienced.  From there we loaded up our gear and pointed north again, with a brief stop in Clifton for some alliterative caving, and then up to Lake Monowai for an exhausting 3 day hike.  Finally we made it up to Te Anau to celebrate Waitangi day, the holiday to celebrate and recognize the signing treaty signing all the way up north in Waitangi (where we visited roughly two months ago).

Weather

We’ve been ever so lucky, as we’ve had nearly straight sunshine for such a long time.  There are the occasional rainstorms but the rain never seems to last too long.

Activities

In Riverton we had one of our best days of the entire trip, in the morning we went into town and rented surf boards and the adventures we had there can be read about in our ‘highlights’ below.

Another cool adventure that happened somewhat spontaneously was the Clifton Caves, just outside the town of Clifton which consists of a sign, a bridge, and a hardware store that had grass growing out of the dilapidated building and likely hadn’t been open since photos were shot in color.  We went up a gravel road and saw a sign for the Caves.  To be clear, neither of us really like caves, or caving (known to us as spelunking) very much.  And as cool as I’m sure these caves were, we weren’t able to crawl our way through the full 300 meters because a short distance in was enough for us.  There were many cool little nooks and crannies and some beautiful stalagmites, but after ten minutes of fumbling through narrow tunnels  that were wet at the bottom, Kelly turned the adventure around when we were descending a ladder and the walls started closing in tight enough that she could feel it pressing on all sides of her.  For some other folks I’m sure the rest of those caves are beautiful and wondrous, but the 15 mins we spent inside was plenty.

From there we climbed north up to a lake in Fiordland National Park (which we will spend a decent amount of next week in so you can read more about this beautiful end of the world area then).  We had a nice little walk before dinner, with a nice vista onto the lake.  The air was very cold, which was a blessing for Lucas.  We got up early the next morning with 4 days and 3 nights of gear on our back and made the slow, arduous and yes, very muddy trek up to an area called Green Lake.  The trail was often flooded and the soil turned everything into muddy bogs.  We were forced to find alternate routes through the thick beech forest often, so what was supposed to be a 6 hour journey actually took 7 hours, which is rare for us.  We were exhausted but when we finally stumbled upon the hut that we would spend the night in, the sun was low in the sky and beautifully illuminating the green (who would have guessed the Green Lake would be green) waters and the mountains that surrounded it on all sides.  Once fed we fell quickly and fully asleep.

The next morning we made an ambitious attempt on one of the peaks directly northwest of us.  There was no trail, and what from afar looks like beautiful rolling hills of grass turned out to be tough tussocky bushwacking once you’re standing in it.  The slogged up the steep hill for hours, finally finding a dry river rock stream we used as a staircase to gain some elevation.  By mid-afternoon we had summited a ridge that afforded us near 360 degree views of the surrounding landscape of mountains, lakes and valleys. The climb down was nearly as hard and we arrived back at the hut at suppertime.  Another early night and another early morning the next day as we wanted to beat what we thought was a nasty patch of incoming weather that threatened to make the trail even more boggy and impassable.  The weather never amounted to anything luckily, and returned to the van mid-afternoon having completed over 35 very hard fought kilometers and 20+ hours of hiking in three days.  We promptly got naked and jumped in the lake, cooked the laziest meal we could think of (soup and pasta) and fell asleep long before it was even dark out.

The next day we drove to Te Anau, a touristy town, where we rented a powered camping site to live it up with modern amenities.  For 20$ we were able to rent out there hot tub spa, and it was well worth the money as we enjoyed the first drinks (a bottle of wine and a big bottle of beer) that had touched our lips in over a month.  And did it ever taste great.

The next day was Waitangi Day, which we were lucky enough to take part in.  It is in recognition of when the Maori (some but not all) signed the treaty of Waitangi back on February 6 of 1840. Luckily Te Anua was having a celebration in the park, and we got to take part in some of the cultural learning.  Lucas learned the Haka, the Maori ceremonial dance. Both Kelly and Lucas learned how to paddle in the giant Maori canoes (called a waka). At the end there was another hangi (a feast that is cooked in the ground).  It was nice to be part of such a positive, fun celebration, and we appreciated all the good will of Maori that were present for sharing it with us.

Food

Once again the highlight meal has to be the mussels we collected from the rocks just metres away from where we camped.  We let them soak in a bucket of salt water all day to get the sand and grit out.  That night we cooked them in a chilli pepper and roasted tomato sauce with lots (and I mean lots) of garlic.  We served them on pasta, with a nice fresh loaf of bread and butter on the side.  We ate as much as we could take (and a little more if we’re being perfectly honest.  And sitting at our table on the beach watching the sun set over the bay that we had surfed in with dolphins that very day, eating the food that very bay had provided for us, felt pretty magical indeed.

Highlights

Alright, so it’s been alluded to up above, but surfing with dolphins never really gets old.  When we got our boards to the beach we noticed the surf was big.  Maybe bigger than we had ever surfed in before.  It was a wee bit intimidating but we eagerly paddled hard out into the water.  Lucas paddled way out and immediately started yelling and motioning for Kelly to get out to where he was.  She thankfully followed and out in the big waves playing with us and the few other surfers were a small pod of Hectors Dolphin.  If you haven’t read some of our earlier blog posts (and you would be forgiven if you hadn’t) you may recall that they are the smallest dolphin on the planet.  What they lack in size they make up for in youthful exuberance however. The honestly really did just like surfing the big waves.  Sometimes they would just jump high out of the water in tandem, and once while Lucas was hitting a decent wave he looked down and there were two just centimeters under his board surfing along below him.  The surf ended up getting bigger and we got tossed around a fair bit, but it was still one of the coolest surfing experiences we have ever had.

Blunders

During our hike to Green Lake we often had to navigate the swampy field by jumping from rock to rock, stick to stick, and bump to bump.  To miss the intended target when bounding from spot to spot had some sticky consequences, as Kelly found out first hand when she missed a step, sending her foot and leg deep into the muddy quagmire. Lucas has to admit he had a good laugh instead of helping her, which Kelly brushed off (along with a bunch of mud) in good taste.

Wildcard

It was a week full of wildcards, as you’ve read about above.  Without any semblance of a plan in front of us, everything often ends up being wild, adventurous and fun. We enjoy finding things as they come, listening to others advice on where to visit and what to do. Who knows where we’ll wind up next week (well we do because we are writing this thing then), but not knowing what lies around the next bend in the road has provided us with great satisfaction so far.  So until next time we are going to keep on doing just that,
Lucas and Kelly

Places

Dear faithful readers, we left you last week in Dunedin, from where we swiftly departed to our scheduled volunteering at the Sinclair Wetlands for the week. After that, we headed south along the coast to explore an area called The Catlins, following the scenic route all the way to Invercargill where you can find us now.

Weather

The weather has been very mixed – we had one very cold night at the Wetlands where we piled on extra wool blankets and a sleeping bag. Other days have been very hot and sunny! We also had a few beautiful nights of stars, where the milky way has been clearly visible.

Activities

Our main activity for this week was our volunteering stint, which we found via our Workaway account (it’s a website that connects volunteers with hosts). Our first volunteering experience in New Zealand was in conservation at the privately owned Sinclair Wetlands. An old dude called Horance Sinclair bought the land, which had been drained and cleared for farming in the days of the early settlers here. He decided to turn the land back into its original form, with a vision of restoring the wetlands – he then sold the land back to the government, and the government gave it to the local Maori iwi (tribe) as part of a reparations deal for previous violations of the Waitangi treaty (basically, the white settlers stole the land from the Maori so now they are giving it back). The guy that we were volunteering for is employed by the tribe to manage the Wetlands. Pretty sweet.

It was an unusual set-up in that we were asked to work 3 full days, and then had 3 days off. Glen, our manager, put us and the 2 other volunteers to work: we re-potted native plants like flax bush and cabbage trees, to make sure they had the best chance of growing in the nursery. We pulled weeds and wrestled with the tangled vines that threatened to overwhelm the slow-growing natives. We learned that most native plants grow really slowly, and the European imports like broom and thistle grow fast, quickly overtaking them. So that means that not only does Glen (the manager) have to plant natives, he also has to maintain them and protect them for a number of years until they ‘win the race’ and outcompete the weeds. A neverending and labour-intensive process! Of course, there is not much money to be found for conservation projects, so he relies on volunteers for the labour. It was good because although some of the work was quite tough and physical, we were informed about why we were doing it, and Glen’s vision for the future of the wetland. It was cool seeing some areas that had been replanted 5-10 years ago and seeing how well they were doing. We even planted some trees and shrubs on one of the days (which was a bit too much like work for Lucas!).

After we worked our 3 days with Glen, we had our 3 ‘off’ days to chill at the volunteer house and make use of their facilities in exchange for the work we’d done. It was nice to wander in the Wetlands and recognise all the plants we had been working with.

We set off feeling quite rested for our tour of the southeast coast, the Catlins. It is famed for its beautiful beaches and we were not disappointed! We saw the white sand of Kaka Point, and stopped at another lighthouse at the comically named ‘Nuggets’, ‘The Nuggets’ are actually huge chunks of rock on the headlands, a bit like The Needles at the Isle of Wight. The ocean was a gorgeous glowing green-blue, and we saw fur seal pups playing in the rock pools far down below.

We headed to Curio Bay as we wanted to go surfing, but alas the surf shop was shut. We did spy a few more dolphins in the distance, and yet more dramatic rocks and coastal scenery. That evening we headed on to Waipapa point to visit yet another lighthouse. We decided lighthouses are actually quite boring. What wasn’t boring, however, was the stunning grassy dunes, the rocky beach, and two lovely sea lions playing in the surf and the kelp. We kept our distance in the grassy dunes and tried to get some shots of the sea lions, one large and one smaller, but some Chinese tourists decided disregard the sign to keep 10 metres from the wildlife and crowd within a couple of metres of them… We may have slightly hoped for them to get charged at, but the playful creatures just swam away instead. We enjoyed watched what we surmised was a mother and young one diving around in the surf after the people had gone. We spent the night at a freedom camp spot high on some bluffs near Fortrose, and witnessed a stunning sunset over the ocean.

 Food

Lucas made some great bread and pizza at the Wetlands, making us of having an OVEN – something we really miss.

 

Highlights

On that one very cold night, we discovered our van has a heater and it actually WORKS! With some tinkering from Lucas we were quickly toasty warm in bed. Happy days! As always, seeing the wildlife has been a highlight, as well as camping in some wild spots.

Blunders

As you can imagine, we have to make sure everything is secure in the van before we drive off, because things are liable to fly around when we careen around a windy NZ road. Kelly was in charge of this and did not put the pin in that secures the fridge… Consequently, the first turn we hit and BAM – out goes the contents of the fridge and, of course, a whole tub of yogurt upended itself on our lovely carpet. Uh oh. Needless to say we have invested in some carpet cleaner and Kelly will not forget to lock the fridge again…

Wildcard

We found an awesome, wild, free camp spot high up on some bluffs near a place called Fortrose. As the sun set behind Stewart Island in the distance, the golden grass lit up with a glow. We could see seabirds nesting on the towering cliffs and waves crashing powerfully far below us. There was only a couple of other campers in the distance. We love it when we can find wild spots like that, as oftentimes the free spots can get a bit busy.