New Zealand. Whoa. Part II.

Continued from below…

From Milford Sound, we made our way towards Queenstown, which we summarily skipped. Now, we have heard that Queenstown is beautiful and it is the nexus of “adventure travel” in New Zealand. Being as Sally and I were not interested in dropping $200 to jump out of, off of or into something we drove on past for real adventure travel: wine tasting. Outside of Queenstown is Gibson Valley, known for its Pinot Noir. We did accidentally drive by the bridge that was the site of the very first bungee jump in the world. We had to stop and gawk. Plus it was beautiful.

Anyway, we skipped Queenstown because we wanted to get to Wanaka, a little-ish town on Lake Wanaka (naturally) that was the amazing. I want to move there. It reminded me of a much smaller Lake Tahoe—on a big lake and surrounded by mountains. Word on the street is that there is a lot of skiing around there. It being summer here, that wasn’t an option. We only had one night there, which was too bad because I really liked it.

But we were in a hurry to get to the glaciers area and it was worth it. From Wanaka, we had a couple hour drive up to Fox Glacier, where we stayed in a wonderful, wonderful hostel called Ivory Towers. They have a big, crowded hostel in town but we stayed in their cottage that they have out of town. It only has a couple of rooms, a wonderful shared kitchen and a view of Mount Cook to blind you (shrouded in clouds most of the time that we were there). We stayed there 2 nights but could have happily stayed longer. From there, we were walking distance away from Lake Matheson, which is well-traveled because of the mountain reflections in its calm waters. I went for the birding!

The real draw, however, of the glacier areas are its two accessible glaciers, Fox and Franz Josef. When we first got there in the evening, we made a run up to Fox Glacier to just hike to the terminal face which you can do without charge or fanfare. In order to get onto the ice, you have to take a guided (and pricey) tour, which I am told one should just do because it is amazing. Well, after our hike to the face of Fox Glacier we decided that the next day, we would pay the money to do the tour on Franz Josef glacier. The next day we were all booked and ready to go when the rains hit…and we started feeling the buyer’s remorse. Ultimately, we canceled the tour thinking it too expensive to run around on the ice. We also figured that there may very well be access to glaciers is in our future. Anyway, we hiked to the terminal face of that glacier as well and that was stunning. Glaciers are amazing, amazing things. Oh and if you need any more evidence that the earth is heating up, head on down to New Zealand and see that glaciers melting and retreating into the mountains as fast as they can.

Leaving Fox Glacier, we had our big driving day—something like 8 hours up the west coast and back into the mountains further north. First made a little detour down to Jackson Bay for one reason and one reason alone: penguins. I really like penguins. I don’t know why but I do. There is a penguin called the southern fjordland penguin that hangs out there but since breeding season was over, they weren’t really around. We scoured beaches and braved driving rain to get a glimpse of one but alas had no success. Abandoning the effort, we drove into the little town to turn around and there, walking down the road was one crested fjorland penguin. Cool.

So, we drove up the west coast of the southern island, which we had heard compared to Highway 1 in CA. Nope. But it was really pretty—small towns separated by miles and miles of grassland and beach on one side and the towering Southern Alps on the other. We stopped at a couple of towns to stretch and eat fudge: Hokatika and Greymouth being their names. Hokatika had been touted as a great little town. It is if you are trying to drop hundreds of dollars on jade artwork. We were fresh out of $500 bills so after gawking at some of the beautiful jade pieces, we just bought some fudge and headed out. You can’t even eat jade.

Our final destination that day was Hanmer Springs, a getaway spot for the city of Christchurch. In the winter, it is a mountain playground surrounded by mountains and skiing. The draw for us was the hot springs which are not the kind at the end of a secluded trail where some naked hippies are bathing. This was a complex with something like 10 pools of various water temperatures from pretty warm to hotter than you can stand with every kind of pulsating and massaging jet at your disposal. We just hung out there for hours, moving between pools, reading, napping, soaking again. It was sort of a cool day so it was perfect. It was perfect right up until a very large man walked by us and shook the deck that we were lounging on. Wait, he walked by but the deck was still shaking. Then when we figured that couldn’t possibly still be shaking the deck, we realized that an earthquake was happening. It was a long one but not particularly strong. Sally and I didn’t think much of it. Everyone else did. Soon after, people went running for the exit.

It turns out that the last time an earthquake was felt at Hanmer Springs was in September when a 7.1 earthquake hit outside of Christchurch and did some serious damage. When this earthquake hit, everyone at Hanmer Springs was hoping that it was just a small local quake. But as reports came out of Christchurch, that was obviously not the case. Christchurch got nailed again, this time by a smaller but more destructive quake as its epicenter was closer to the surface and closer to the city. Sally and I responded by going back into the pools, not thinking much about it.

It was when we left Hanmer Springs and headed for Kaikoura that we realized the scope. As all communications had been wiped out, there were just periodic rumors circulating around. It wasn’t until people started arriving from there, fleeing the city that it became clear just how bad it was. At that point, we also realized that family and Peace Corps were going to hear about this and that we had no ability to contact anyone. It wasn’t until the next day that we got a window of internet to shoot Peace Corps and family a note that we were OK. Of course, by then Peace Corps had sort of gone nuts. They have to account for volunteers at all times and so had to report to headquarters in DC that they couldn’t account for us and that we were in the area of the earthquake. It is all cleaned up now, but there was manhunt on for us which got as high as the US embassy in New Zealand.

Anyway, Kaikoura. Sally and I literally looked at property here. We want to move here. Ocean on one side, skiable mountains on the other and lots of fertile land for a little farm. Beautiful downtown and ridiculous scenery everywhere. We were there for three nights and never wanted to leave. Plus, they had the best fudge on our trip. We got the 5-pack. We went on a wonderful hike around the peninsula, took some bikes out for a ride, ate good food, drank good beer and wine and had a generally nice time. Most folks when they come to Kaikoura go on a whale-watching boat trip. Whales are cool, but they are no birds! I opted for the Albatross Encounter! It was one of the highlights of my trip. I won’t try to convince you just how cool large seabirds like albatross, mollymawk, and giant petrels are but I will say that if you ever have the chance to see these birds up close, you will agree with me. First of all, until you see one up close, I don’t think you can understand just how big a 9 foot wingspan is on a bird and how big that bird must be on which they are attached. We saw Wandering and Royal albatross and they are really giant, beautiful birds. From the boat, the guide threw out some chum, which drew in birds of all shapes and sizes, mostly very large and beautiful. We also saw more penguins on that trip along with a colony of seal pups and a pod of about 50 dusky dolphins jumping around. Cool. Really cool.

We left Kaikoura with a bit of dread. First of all, due to the earthquake destruction Peace Corps had told us not to go to Christchurch but to instead drive north, cross the straight between the two islands and then to try to fly out of Wellington. However, they could not help us financially. We had to drop our rental car in Christchurch and that was where our flight was. So, after some pretty tense conversations that resulted in me telling Peace Corps that we were going to do what they were telling us not to do. It was a bit of frustrating double-standard. They were telling us that we were not allowed to go to Christchurch but that since we were on annual leave on private time, they could not help with anything financially. In our minds, when you are on “private time” and paying, no one gets to tell you what to do. So, we went to Christchurch. Upon arrival it became very clear that we should not be in Christchurch.

The first thing that we saw was the liquefaction. Christchurch is built on a plain of glacial silt that holds a lot of water. So when the earth shook around, that slurry of silt and water turned into a liquid that flooded the city. Once the water settled out, it left behind a 3-5 inch layer of muddy silt covering the city. By the time that we got there, there were piles of this everywhere, almost like it had snowed and people had shoveled it out of their yards and off their driveways. Cars were buried in it and roads were closed where they hadn’t cleared yet. As we got closer to town, the roads got worse and worse where giant cracks had opened up and chunks of land decided to be a few inches higher or lower after the quake. We were trying to get to our hostel which claimed on its website to open and “fully functional” after the earthquake. We had a hell of time getting there because so many roads were closed. Ultimately, we asked one of the many police managing the city what to do and they sent us on a roundabout way to get there.

When we got to the hostel, we found that “fully functional” meant no gas, no heat, no hot water, and no water. There was bin of water that we could pull from and boil to drink. The bathroom was a port-a-potty a few blocks away. We tried to stay anywhere else but everything was full. So we settled. And just as we settled in to our room, we felt our first aftershock, a 4.4 bolt that struck fast and furiously. 10 minutes later, another one hit, and then another. We started to come to the conclusion that maybe we shouldn’t have come to Christchurch. We probably felt 10-15 aftershocks in the 10 hours that we were in Christchurch. But we dropped of our car and got on our flight to Auckland in the morning like it was nothing. Just like that, our New Zealand trip was over. And in a few short hours, we found ourselves in Nadi again, sweating profusely. Welcome home.