Leaving Wellington we continued on our New Zealand road trip by catching a short but expensive ferry ride across the Cook Strait to South Island. Our itinerary was a bit tight, as we spent more time in the North than originally planned… but we still had lots of time to see some of the more famous sights that the South Island had to offer. In a lot of ways, South Island is just like North Island… only more extreme. The weather here is just as cold… only more unpredictable. The mountains are just as beautiful… only bigger. And of coarse, there are sheep here… Man, there are a lot of sheep here. I don’t think that anyone would have any problems running out of sheep to count on a restless night.
I wont bore you with a stop-by-stop itinerary of where we went… Instead I’ll highlight a couple of places we saw that warrant some color commentary.
Abel Tasman National Park
I had no knowledge of this place until Dave went on describing how cool and unique it was as a marine sanctuary. He was out here the last time that he visited New Zealand and had a such a great experience that he wanted to give it a go for a second time. One of the things to do here is to rent sea kayaks and paddle around the marine reserve to see some of the nicer beaches, coves, and the marine life (seals) that make their home in the park. The last time that Dave was out here, he kayaked to the 1st major bay and stayed overnight at the floating Aquapacker hostel (it’s basically a houseboat) and hiked back to the starting beach. This time around, we would kick it up a notch and have our kayaks (and ourselves) dropped off about 10km further up the peninsula so that we could kayak the whole way down. Two days kayaking on the Tasman Sea with an overnight on a houseboat with hot water? Sounded good to me. Where do we sign up?
We arrived in the morning for a (not so) quick gear set-up and orientation and were blessed with beautifully clear skies. Fortune was smiling on us once again! Or so I thought. The water taxi dropped the four of us off at Onetahuti Beach as ominously dark clouds started to gather overhead. Where were those clear skies that the weatherman called for? Typical New Zealand. Rain drops started to fall as we pushed off shore. I didn’t mind getting a little wet: we were on the ocean right? At least the water was pretty calm.
An hour and a half later, visions of Gilligan danced through my head as surging waves threatened to toss our wee boat onto the rocks. We decided to tuck into tiny Mosquito Bay in hopes of riding out this freak storm. For an hour we stood around, completely wet, anticipating that the weather would clear up at any moment. Meanwhile, the temperature was dropping quickly and the rain was hitting us sideways with increasing animosity. For a while there, the for of us stood in long drop camping toilets as they were the only warm, dry, and wind sheltered spots on the beach. We faced a dilemma at this point: The weather was not improving and were still about 7km away from The Anchorage where we were supposed to be staying. Furthermore, we had no camping gear or food so we couldn’t really stay all night huddled together in a couple of port-a-potties. We had to try to push on.
Now we were fighting both the weather and the time… as we had waited about an hour and a half at Mosquito Bay. The winds were howling on-shore, so the waves had actually gotten bigger since we put in. Now we were paddling sideways against 4 foot swells and were in some real danger of capsizing our 2-man kayaks. We made it as far as Bark Bay before one of the water taxis came out to instruct us to head back to shore. The conditions were simply too dangerous for kayaking. Luckily for us, Bark Bay had a ranger station. Dave tried to arrange for a water taxi to pick us up, but the people from our kayak rental company were being real jerks and refused to do anything to help us out. No taxis after 4pm… It was 4:10pm! Thankfully the ranger was able to radio into our Aquapackers hostel, and the owner was nice enough to come by and get us with his boat. Hot water showers: Here we come!
The next day, the clouds parted, the seas rested and the sun shone blissfully through clear blue skies as we started our hike back to Bark Bay to gather our kayaks. Now this was more like it! We had a bit of a longer paddle than planned as our kayaks were further up shore, but after paddling though a winter storm, these calm seas were easy. So this is what our outing was supposed to be like. We were even able to find a nice deserted cove to park and sun bathe in. Good times.
Milford Sound
Supposedly Milford Sound gets rain almost 300 days a year. Not that we would know because it was calm and beautiful the day we showed up there. Milford Sound is a bit of a misnomer, as the deep waterways are actually fjords created by advancing glaciers during the last ice age (a sound is a waterway created by river erosion). The scale of the features of Milford are impossible to describe with any real justice. Everything here is simply immense: The mountains and cliffs seem to tower straight up into the heavens… wayward cloud ensnared in the grasp of their oversized claws. We took a 2 hour cruise through the fjord and were thrilled with all if the amazing things we saw along the way. At one point we spotted penguins, then seals, then raced over to view bottle nosed dolphins playing at the bow of the boat. Very cool. And the drive in from Te Anau was nothing short of spectacular: every postcard picture that you see of New Zealand was covered on that one stretch of road.
Check out some pictures of our road trip here: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/NZRoadTripSouthIsland
Nearing the 6 month mark of our trip we were getting a bit tired of visiting things. We were starting to get a little bit jaded about the things we saw… blithely pointing out spectacular scenery like they were just another sign on the road. We needed a vacation from our vacation! Originally I had schemed to fly ourselves out to the Cook Islands for a spell, relaxing and getting off the beaten track. Back in April during the economic downturn, flights to the Cook Islands were relatively cheap… no doubt due to the strength of the US dollar. But now, these flights were about a thousand dollars a person: At these prices one island starts looking as good as the next.
We settled on Fiji as it was a much cheaper alternative and we hadn’t been there before. Rod and Jen had gone there previously and loved it, so it sounded like a great place to relax and check-out for a week. We arrived on the southern island of Kadavu (pronounced Kan-Da-Vu) after a day or so of hopping on and off various planes, ready to relish not having any plans. Here, I was back in my element: a cabana on the beach, warm waters to swim in, and a hammock to nap in during the afternoon. It was almost like I was home again. Ana, the industrious and organized person that she is, took the downtime opportunity to start planning our upcoming adventures in the Philippines, Laos, and Vietnam. What a godsend (thanks honey!). I was free to be absolutely irresponsible (as if unemployment wasn’t irresponsible enough) and just enjoy being a beach bum for a few days. I did some diving, snorkeling, swimming, and a whole lot of napping. It was great. Before we left on this trip, Chris Uhlik pointed out that he pictured us arriving in the Cook Islands and just never leaving: Tempting Chris… Tempting! One can really get used to this island lifestyle. I had been living on the mainland for so long that I forgot what it was like.
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