Well... the trip's winding down now.
At the moment I'm hanging out in the Wellington Airport. After five months of living basically within arms-reach of each other, Jon and I are finally parting ways. His flight through Aukland and San Francisco to Chicago departs two hours before my flight through Aukland and LAX to Pittsburgh. We're sad for the trip to come to a close, but both excited about what's coming up next. Jon will have a few months at home before starting med school at Einstein in The Bronx, NY. I will be spending a few weeks with the fam in Switzerland before buckling down and studying for the MCAT. We're both excited to settle down a bit and gain some structure to our lives though I'll still have a few months to wait. I'm looking forward to finding a real job and putting down some roots, hopefully in September/October and hopefully somewhere out west. This last year has been an almost frantic dash from one place to another, and while it's been a blast, it will be very nice to quit decimating my savings account, to stash the backpack in a closet, and especially, to see some familiar faces.
Jon and I left Mt. Bruce, our 'home' on the North Island, 22 days ago. In the past three weeks we've done a big tour of the South Island, swinging south along the west coast and back north along the east coast. Our first major activity on the South Island was the Abel Tasman Great Walk, located on the northwest coast. Despite being NZ's smallest national park, Abel Tasman still receives more visitors than any other park. The park's ~50 miles of coastline encompass 98 beaches, and about half the parks visitors traverse the park via sea-kayak. Whether hiked or paddled the track is traditionally traveled in one direction facilitated by a water-taxi pick-up or drop-off. On recommendation from the Dept. of Conservation (DOC), Jon and I took the taxi to the northern most drop-off point, spent our first day hiking further out the trail to the final and least visited hut, and spent the next three days hiking back to the car. The beaches were golden, the waters verdant and clear, and the track empty. Traveling NZ in late May and June meant that Jon and I had completely missed the peak and even the shoulder tourist seasons, and in most places Winter hours were already in effect. According to the water-taxi skipper, on a peak day his company alone will transport up to 800 passengers and 200 kayaks. Jon and I had the track basically to ourselves and shared the 40-person capacity huts with only 4-8 others. Two other really interesting things about Abel Tasman ... One, if you're willing to shell out a little more money, the water-taxi can pick you up and drop you off at any of a half-dozen locations, which makes the track accessible for day hikers or single night trips as well. And two, the hiking track has a few long tidal crossings only passable within a few hours of low tide (if you look through my photos you'll see a few of Jon crossing a giant soggy plain barefoot). We had some great weather and made fanastic time along the track since it was graded and extremely well-maintained.
Traveling when you are around the winter solstice (southern hemisphere here!) means that you only have so many hours of daylight to cram with activities. So try as we might Jon and I have been pretty well rested on this trip—there really isn't much to do after dark! We also don't want to miss a mile of the spectacular scenery around here so we generally pull over, and cook dinner and pitch the tent in a campground or rest area. We'd normally wake up around 6:30am but the sky isn't light until around 7:15 and the sun doesn't rise until after 7:40. The south island is located from roughly 41° to 46° latitude (the western US-Canadian border is 52°40' and the Mason-Dixon line is ~40° for reference), so we're pretty far south, but not quite as far as we were in parts in Patagonia or even Montana.
The day after Abel Tasman, Jon and I woke up in pull-off in the middle of no-where, packed up and had a breakfast of yogurt and home-made mueslix for breakfast, explored a goofy little park in an historic mining area at sunrise, and visited the famous “Pancake rocks” tourist trap national park all before 9am. By 9:30 we were decked out in safety goggles and gloves and were using a blast furnace to forge steel into the proper shape to make a knife. With a bit of help for the tricky parts from the folks at Barrytown Knifemaking, Jon and I had each handcrafted our own forged carbon steel knife. It was awesome. After the hammer and anvil we used large belt-sanders hone and shape the blade, and even cut our own wooden handles and pounded the brass pins through the tang. The knives look sweet and are damn sharp too – Jon performed surgery with his on it's first time out, neatly slicing off the end of his thumb while dicing an onion. That night we watched a spectacular sunset over some small rocky islands and made it down to Greymouth for the Monteith's Brewery tour (a great tasting Radler and a summer Ginger beer and the tour ends with a help-yourself to the taps session). A long, long, glorious day.
Down the coast we visited the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. They were nice, but Jon and I both now have low tolerances for standing at a distance staring at ice after our sad, wet, cold experience with the tourist trap that is the Perito Merino Glacier in Argentina. The nearby Lake Matthius was, however, really sweet. It's a small lake/big pond with a mirror lake surface. The following day was yet another beautiful drive, but now cutting south through the mountains. We stopped into the perplexing but pretty little village of Arrowtown – it somehow melds New England fall, chincy Colorado ghost town, ubiquitous ski village, and English/Scottish agriculture in one tiny package. That afternoon we passed through some of the Central Otago wine country and arrived in Queenstown, New Zealand's well-promoted “adventure capital.” The big storms that had squashed our travels on the North Island left all the mountains on the South Island with a healthy dumping of snow, and we had some truly spectacular views.
Okay, well that was a big update, but covers all the time behind all the photos I have ready to post. So please checkout my shutterfly site for my photos and look forward to more photos and updates soon.
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