Glenorchy to Franz Josef
Trip Start
Oct 21, 2006
1
24
31
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Franz Josef,
New Zealand
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Having battered myself blue in Queenstown i headed up to the top of lake Wakatipu to rest and recuperate. Glenorchy is a tiny village sandwiched between the mountains at the lake head but this was too Hollywood for me so i headed round the lake to a place called Kinloch which has one house, the one i stayed in. Great place with a hot tub that you could lie in as you looked out over the lake. Would have spent longer in it but for the flying fangs (sand flies) which were draining me of blood faster than the tax man. In order to rest up i decided to hike part of the Dart River trail past a place called Paradise (featured in the Lord of the Rings though i have no idea which film). The hike was preceded by a hair raising 20km drive along unsealed roads and across proper rivers (unbridged). I grounded the car twice in rivers and was lucky to get the thing out again. The hike took 4 hours and weaved through the Dart Valley passed thunderous waterfalls which punctured the tree infested flanks of the place and closer to some spectacular views of the big mountains in the near distance. I was looked on with great disdain by the hikers coming off the 3 day route as i paced it up in a t shirt, shorts and not much else while they lumbered on with huge rucksacks and full waterproof gear.
WEEK TWO - FIORDLAND
One day was enough rest and recuperation and, on the verge of coming down off my adrenalin high i headed down to Fiordland. Based myself at Te Anau, another ludicrously pretty lake with mountainous backdrop and headed out on day trips to the Fiords from there. Day one in the area was a Sea Kayak trip down Doubtfull Sound (incorrectly named as it is a Fiord). There were only 4 other people in my group and we were the only people on the Fiord so it was a magical experience. Doubtfull is a big glacial valley and so is an impressive U shape with lots of hanging valleys falling into it in a surprised fashion. It again is littered with waterfalls, many of which we played under in the kayaks. The place had an eery silence and the water was glassy flat in most places. I had given up the steering seat to the young German girl with the fierce face in the hope it might make her smile and it was all i could do not to give constant instruction when we inexplicably weaved our way in zig zags down the fiord. She also seemed not to realise the need to paddle the kayak in order to make progress and so i spent most of my time frantically paddling to keep us up with the group. I had pondered a few choice words and pictured bending her over the kayak and giving her a good whack with the paddle but valor got the better of me and i settled for 'accidentally' splashing her repeatedly with my backstroke. I dare say she tired of this after a couple of hours though it did nothing for her desire to paddle harder.
Day two in the area was spent under Millford Sound (another incorrectly named Fiord) diving. This was an even more fantastic day than the previous one. Millford sound gets 8m of rainfall a year and has such a wide catchment area that the fiord has anywhere between 3m and 8m of fresh water sitting on top of the salt water at any one time. This creates a marine environment unique in the world. The tannins in the fresh water (from the trees it washes down through) act as a filter for the sun and create light conditions similar to being 100 - 300m under water. This coupled with the relatively benign conditions (fiord mouth shelters it from the worst ravages of the Tasman sea) creates a deep water marine environment. I therefore dived with sea and coral that you would not see anywhere in the world on a recreational dive. Coupled with that was the slightly unnerving experience of descending and ascending through the mixing layer of fresh and salt water which made everything very gloopy and oily and reduced visibility to about 30cm - damn this is freaky as you suddenly feel you are lost and alone. The other distinctive characteristic of diving in Millford Sound is the temperature. It was so cold 20m down i swear i lost my bollocks and it took another 2 hours before they resurfaced. Instant ice cream headaches all round. Oh, nearly forgot, the third interesting feature of diving in the Fiord is the underwater topography. The U shaped valley continued for another 200 - 300m below water level and so you dive on a rock face that drops away suddenly below you - very difficult to gauge depth in this environment and more than a little intimidating looking down and not being able to see the end of the plunging rock face you are traversing. On the way back in on the boat we stopped off at one of the bigger waterfalls (3 times as high as Niagara apparently - he may have said Viagra - not sure as i could not hear much through the 14mm rubber sock i was wearing around my head). We all piled out of the boat with our fins and mask on and swam under it -w hich was incredible though slightly uncomfortable as the sensation is like getting pounded by sack loads of needles. The really cool bit is when you lie back and stick you fins up above the water - the force of the crashing water creates a wind that hits your fins and blows you back out into the fiord. One final note on Millford Diving - it is so cold the wet suits have what can only be described as genital warmers on em - straps that you pull from behind you over your crotch and attach at the front. This is the work of Satan (or a particularly mean woman, i leave you to decide which, if indeed they are different). It is like someone giving you a giant wedgy and then holding it there for an hour. I was almost in tears on resurfacing.
I returned to Millford Sound the next day to take a more leisurely boat trip around the fiord -all very lovely and i will upload the pictures some time so you can testify to this.
That was enough of mucking around in Fiords and i headed out the next day to drive the Southern Scenic Route through to Dunedin (along the Catlins). After the stunning majesty and sheer size of Fiordland anything would have been a disappointment. However, the rolling countryside was very pretty - much like Dorset or Scotland, only wetter !. There were two driving highlights on the trip down. The first was being pulled over by the cops for speeding - terribly polite and not at all patronising. It was almost a pleasure paying the fine and after he had taken my money we got into a long conversation about where i was going and he gave me detailed directions and even some hostel recommendations. The second highlight was driving the unsealed roads that lead off the scenic route down to the various coastal features. Mild boredom had set in at this point and i chose to alleviate it by trying out my rally car driving skills. Several hand brake turns and sideways skids later i was looking pretty good. Promptly mis timed a corner going too fast and stuffed the car across a ditch and into a bank. After i finished pulling bits of the bank out of the car it was almost impossible to tell i had stuffed it into the verge. I do love hire cars. I stayed the first night in a great little place called Riverton which felt like West Bay in Dorset, though colder and wetter. It was as if time had passed it by and it was stuck in the 50's. Night two was spent in Dunedin which has clearly seen better days but is nevertheless very Scottish with it's impressive stone buildings and mostly miserable climate.
WEEK TWO STILL - BACK IN BIG COUNTRY
Two days of no activity was starting to send me crazy so i quickly paced it up to Wanaka, an hour north of Queenstown and also based around an impossibly pretty lake. It is a wonderful little community, relatively unspoiled by the cynical tourist trade. I came here for the Canyoning and it was awesome. Canyoning for the uninitiated basically consists of walking up a bastard steep mountain and then throwing yourself down a steep river valley via a series of jumps, abseils and white water slides. We frequently jumped 10m down into impossibly small rock pools and abseiled through numerous waterfalls. The most painful part of it all was catching my genitals on a rock on the way down one of the white water slides (descending face first) and abseiling facing out down some of the waterfalls (which inevitably led to catching my right testicle in the climbing harness and then hanging from it for 20-30m). Other than that it was incredible fun and a big rush. The group we had was hilarious, the highlight of which had to be the outrageously camp and non PC gay American Lobbyist, who seemed to have even more trouble than i did keeping from bashing his buts off the rocks. Spent a very enjoyable evening in his and others company that night reliving tales of the day and giving each other terrible and very drunken advice about everything from hair transplants to career and life choices.
Battered and bruised i headed on the next day for Franz Josef and some Glacier walking ............................
