Tomandbecky's travel blogs:
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Glaciars, fjords and penguins
Entry 26 of 43 | show all | print this entry |
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Rebecca:
Hello from Dunedin, probably New Zealand's most Scottish town. The houses are either typically British terraced brick houses or Victorian mansions. The weather is bad with rain and fog that sticks to the green hills surrounding this small city. We live in an English bus. Yes, you got that right, we live in an '76 Bedford bus that has been renovated and transformed into a mobile home in 70ies style with flowery blankets, a wood oven and orange lamp shields. The lovely owners (who still use it for their own vacation) set it in a beautiful garden looking out over the Dunedin bay. Of all accomodation during this trip, the bus is the funkiest. We simply love it!
Within in 10 min drive, we can reach the Albatros and Penguin colonies of our peninsula and I can tell you, watching an Albatros fly takes your breath away. Never have I seen such a bird. Like penguins, they stay with the same partner for their whole life and are very affectionate to each other - when Mom comes home after maybe 3 days at sea, she greets Dad, who stayed with the egg or chick, with kisses and canoodeling. Really sweet to watch.
After our Abel Tasman trek (turquoise waters, lonely beaches and sun, sun, sun), we made it to the West Coast, sleeping one night at a sandflie-infested picknick site by the road. The coast was nice, but nothing really special, so we drove South rather fast. In the afternoon, it started to rain with no end in sight. We decided to look for a cheap hostel and actually found a 30$ place in Ross. Ok, it was a rather simple place, but what can you expect for 15 euros? At least, the name was grand: Empire Hotel. When Ross was still a gold mining town, this pub - hotel probably was grand, but now it was rather run-down and filled with bearded drunken farmers in shorts and boots. Yet, we liked the place with its wooden floor and ceiling, the fireplace and the huge staircase from where you'd expect the ladies to stride down any minute. First, there was an old juke box playing. Then, someone played the old piano. Then, they found a guitar and started singing country-style songs we didn't know but like. That was quite a hot night!
Further South, we went to the Franz Josef and Fox glaciars. Rather boring after the Patagonian ones. We ignored all signposts and the guidebook telling us to do the hike to the glaciar in sturdy footwear only and headed to "Franz" in flipflops. Earned us curious looks, but who cares. It wasn't really difficult a walk.
After a night in Haast village (totally overpriced campground, but Thomas' delicious "Reibekuchen" for dinner) we made our way up to the pass. Through dense woods we went, along waterfalls and beautiful streams - but when our petrol ran out, we were in no mood to enjoy that sight. On the last drops, we reached a totally overpriced gas station - and from there on relaxed again at the sight of the beautiful Siberia valley with its green flowery meadows.
That night we stayed in Wanaka, a touristy place by a beautiful lake sourrounded by high mountains. The city itself wasn't really our cup of tea and the camp ground real sh***, so we left after a night and went to Glenorchy.
Glenorchy is a small village near busy Queenstown, quiet and set in a gorgeous green valley by a lake, with views on snow-capped mountains. Still being bad tourists, we hadn't realized that we'd have to buy the tickets for the Routeburn trek in Queenstown. But we didn't want to drive 1 hour back, so we decided to just do a day trek into the park.
Thomas:
The day started promising with the sunrise during the half an hour that took us to the Routeburn Trek carpark. The road took us acroos a wide valley and along dewy meadows while the sheep white clouds and white or grey mountains turned pink. At 8am the first meters took us across a river with a suspension bridge (there were 10 more..) and we enjoyed the thick forest watering the roots in the Routeburn river. The creek jumped down the mountain in little falls and rapids as it was not very steep yet. Here and then the water assembled in little blueish pools and often huge rocks or trunks were lying there. After two and a half hours we reached the Routeburn Falls Hut, a very fancy hut with cubicles offering a little space and bunk beds and providing an amazing view from the balcony. Well, we had no tickets and it was anyway 10.30am so we had our second breakfast before going back to the trail now leading us above the tree line (Kiwis say bush line) along the Routeburn river. It was a steep ascend to the saddle but the waterfalls along the way gave a lot of opportunities to stop and enjoy the nature. We were good in time climbed slowly until we made it to the Harris saddle at about 1800m and had our lunch taking in the views of numerous snow capped peaks. We had done half of the 3day Routeburn Trek in half a day and enjoyed having just a small backpack. It took us till 6pm to finish the same way down and I could not help but had to take a bath in one of these pools.
Next day, we were back on the road with little and ever-awful Gollum (our car) and reached after a short stop in Te Anau at a beautiful camp ground near the Milford Sound (fjord). We had booked a cruise on a boat taking us along the fjord to the beginnings of the Tasman Sea so we started early the next morning to the Milford Sound wharf. The one-hour drive was as beautiful as the Milford Sound itself taking us through deep valleys with nearly vertical mountains rising to both sides. The best of the cruise (Mitre cruises: the smallest and best ship) was the conplemantary Pumpkin soup and a nice German couple we met. The Milford Sound seemed to us nice but from what we had read and seen advertised is a hype!
The same day we took our house (the tent) which had been drying during our cruise and made our way through Fjordland to the South Coast. We found a place in Riverton, a little fishing village where toursim wasn't big at all. The camp ground seemed to be a bit overpriced but offered a fully equipped kitchen and a huge common room with pool table, TV and lots of stuff.
After all the days of waking up early for trekking, driving or taking cruise boats we had a long breakfast having a very entertaining conversation with a Dutch couple who were very interested in our banana pancakes. After a not so long drive along the south coast (the most beautiful one, maybe because the tourist buses don't come here) we reached in the afternoon our hostel. It was the 2nd best one so far in NZ overlooking the Kaka point beach and surf. We went before dinner to the Nugget point nearby to watch sea lion, sea bears and yellow-crested penguins. The latter most intensely you can imagine.
We would have loved to stay for a while, but the car rental ends soon so we had a short morning beach stroll and headed for Dunedin the next day.
Check out the pics of the last month, freshly uploaded!
Where I stayed:
Bus Stop Backpackers
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