A month ago, I packed up my life in Dunedin and headed out on one last big road trip across New Zealand. Here is week five!
**
dates of travel: 4-12 Dec 2016
As I write this (Thursday), the last few days have been horribly rainy. I’m on the West Coast – which is notorious for rain, admittedly, I’m not sure why I’d hoped for good weather – I got in two good days of hiking at Fox Glacier before the weather rolled in. I arrived mid afternoon on Sunday and decided last minute to get a hostel for the night. I needed to do laundry, some cooking, and very desperately needed a shower. Once I was clean, I drove out to the glacier and walked out to the viewpoint. It was a pleasant walk, except for the mass of slow people walking on the wrong side of the path, and the groups of people who took up the entire path and didn’t move. I don’t know why I still expect that common courtesy after a year of travel, but I do.
The glacier is about where it was in the 1980s. The DOC woman told me this after I stopped and asked her if this glacier used to have a swing bridge to access a viewpoint… something I remember from our trip here in 1995. She doesn’t recall it so maybe my mother can tell me. The walk is over the moraine, along the rushing glacial river, to the viewpoint. The viewpoint itself is still over half a kilometre from the glacier face. Signs everywhere told me not to step over the barricades to get closer. I can’t be too fussed about that, really, since I’ve been much closer to a glacier face than that, and at sea level.
The next day, I headed for Lake Matheson and did the loop track. No famous reflection today, though. There was nasty cloud over the glacial valley, but the weather to the west was warm and sunny. After I finished my walk, I headed out there, to Gillespies Beach, to see what the fuss was all about. Turns out, it was delightful, and I decided to return here for camping that night.
I returned to town, got some work done and then headed back to the beach around 5. It was lucky I got there when I did, because the campsite filled up quickly with cars. I’d staked out a good spot and was not keen to move (nor really had anywhere else to go) even despite the sandflies. And OHHHH were there sandflies. I am covered in bites, I itch like a mf*.
There was a fire pit at the campsite, so I began gathering wood and soon had a group of French/Canadians helping get a fire going. They began to play frisbee as well, and that got more people involved. Soon, we had twenty people clustered around the fire as the sun went down. I also got my one and only view of Mount Cook/Mount Tasman from this side of the island as the clouds dropped lower and the peaks came out in the full sunshine. The clouds came back before the sunset though, so as much as I had anticipated a gorgeous orange and red sunset, I didn’t get one.
Since Tuesday, I’ve been holed up in Franz Josef but haven’t been able to do too much; I spent a lot of time writing and catching up on projects but left the more pressing issues for later (calling people, figuring out what to do when my visa is up) which wasn’t too smart.
I’ve been feeling a bit down lately. My conversation with Tom last week about needing to take time for myself… I’ve been alone for a while now and for even longer without people I can really pour my heart out to. It’s tough. I’ve been away for a year, I’ve been bouncing around from place to place – making friends here and there but losing touch with them when I leave. The people I considered close friends have disappeared, away to do their own thing, or upset with me over something I said or did. I sleep alone, in my car, with my thoughts drifting aimlessly from idea to rationalisation to imagination to everything and nothing all at once. I read a lot of books, I write a lot of words. My mind is a jumble, and I am at a loss for what to do in January.
It hasn’t been an easy week.
I’m waiting on the weather – funny how that becomes a thing when you no longer rely on a mostly indoor life. I have barely set foot outside in the last two days. It has been flooding in places along the road and I didn’t want to camp near the lake tonight for that reason. If the weather doesn’t change tomorrow, I have to go north. I have to skip the glaciers and the walks that I wanted to do here. It’s not that I am running out of time, far from it in fact, but I want to spend time north of here, in a part of the country I have only been through by bus.
brt week five, the rest
The weather changed the next day, slightly at least, and I took advantage of a good weather Friday to hike the Roberts Point track. Part of my mind wondered if my parents had taken us on this trail when I was here in 1995, but I quickly abandoned that idea. The entire trail is a scramble over rocks and walking along the sides of exposed basalt. It was a phenomenal hike. I had my knee brace on and even with that I was able to jump from rock to rock. Half of the track up was deluged from the recent rain but on the way back there was noticeably less water on the path and the air was much more humid!
The view. Oh, the view. You don’t see the glacier from the path until you reach the viewpoint. I believe my exact words upon turning to view it were “oh, yeah, that’s alright” and received a few laughs from the others at the top. I met a man on the trail and we end up spending the rest of the hike chatting – everything from politics to how to live in NZ to the best places he needed to see while he’s here. Now, I have an invite to go hang out at the Nydia Hut in the Queen Charlotte Sounds and I might take Phil up on that.
At the end of the trek, I stopped in town and got a big, juicy burger and a glass of cider. I’d been proper craving a burger for a few days and it was mouthwaterly good. After enjoying it, I drove north to the Lake Mahinapua campsite just outside of Hokitika. In the morning, the weather turned again. I spent the day in town getting some minor errands done (and took a side trip out to the Hokitika Gorge) before going north and camping outside of Greymouth.
I explored the old Brunner mine site the next morning and then I drove out to Lake Brunner. I originally wanted to camp there but decided it wasn’t all that great – so I went back into Greymouth to a hostel. The next morning, I walked the Point Elizabeth Walkway and then kept driving up the West Coast. I stopped at the Punakaiki pancake rocks and wandered down the road to the Cavern.
A few kilometres down the road is the Truman Track. The trail is a short ten minute walk to the beach. The last little bit takes you out on to the sandstone and down past some mini cliffs. The beach sits in a little cove and the highlight is the waterfall that tumbles over the cliff on to the beach. My last stop was the Tauranga Bay Sea Colony and the Cape Foulwind lighthouse before I stayed two nights in Westport… where literally all I did was write and catch up on deadlines.
Next week promises to be amazing. I’m going north to Karamea, the Kahurangi National Park/Heaphy track, and the Opahara basin. I am planning on being in Abel Tasman or Nelson for Christmas! (can you believe its already the holidays?! I can’t, not at all. 2016 has flown by. What a year.)
*Editors note: this is as I wrote it, but plans changed. What did I do instead of Abel Tasman? Find out in the next post!