Week 27: New Zealand

What a week this has been!

We kicked the week off celebrating HALF A YEAR of travel! 6 months…

away from Canada,

living out of a backpack,

spending all day, everyday, together,

experiencing incredible sights and adventures!

And WHAT a place to be celebrating.

We divided our time between windy, scenic drives and beautiful trails. With the freedom to go wherever the good weather was, we got in the habit of checking the weather each morning and following the sun. This worked out to mean we had a week of warm, sunny weather!

Tramping was our top priority here in NZ, so we got right to it. We had originally wanted to do one of the nine Great Walks while we were here, but after trying to book into some of the huts back in September and finding out they were full, we realized we would be doing day treks instead. This worked out just fine because the country is filled with great trails! Our first official tramping opportunity came in Abel Tasman National Park. Abel Tasman Coastal Track is one of the Great Walks, but we were still able to do a portion of it as a day hike. We started the day with a boat trip that took us by an island where we could watch a seal colony, and then were dropped off at Torrent Bay. The tide was out so the boat wasn’t able to get us right to shore, making this the first hike we have ever started in the water! After walking up the beach, we hit the trail and hiked up to Cleopatra’s Pool, a rocky pool with a natural waterslide. We each took a turn down the slide, and then enjoyed cooling off in the pool. We then continued our hike along a stunning coastal track, which took us through ferns and along beaches. Throughout the 22.5km hike, we were provided with many, many scenic viewpoints!

We then set off towards Kaikoura. We enjoyed a beautiful coastal drive, despite massive road construction still going on to repair the damage from the November 2016 earthquake. In Kaikoura, we took a walk along the coastal walkway, and ended up on the exposed rock next to the ocean… and so many seals! We were able to get fairly close to them, and enjoyed watching them flop around and make noises.

Lake Tekapo was our next stop. We ventured out on the Cowan Hill Walkway, which took us up a hill and then by the lakeside for great views of this shimmering blue lake. In the morning, we hiked the steep trail to the top of Mount John, and enjoyed the 360-degree views from there!

From Lake Tekapo, we headed to Lake Pukaki. We rode along in awe from the first view of Lake Pukaki all the way up to Mount Cook village. The drive was filled with “ahh, look!!” and “can you believe this?!”. Will was great about pulling over very frequently so I could take a million photos. Once we arrived in the village, we set off on the Hooker Valley trail, a pretty flat trail (10km rtn) that took us out to a glacier fed lake, where we had a chance to cool our toes.

In the morning, we set off on foot for a challenging trek up to the Mueller Hut. An early morning start allowed us to get ahead of the sun a bit, and made the 1800+ stairs a little easier to take. After finishing with the stairs, we scrambled over large rocks and a steep scree slope. This hike involved an elevation gain of 1km over the 4.8km trail up to the hut! Our motivator? The higher we climbed, the better the views of the glacier. However, it was pretty eerie listening to the cracking of glaciers and watching as pieces fell. We arrived at the hut after three hours of climbing, and the view from the hut was totally worth it!

We managed to get ourselves back down from the Mueller Hut, and we ended our week with a trip to Christchurch’s beautiful (and free!) botanical gardens. We enjoyed wandering along little paths through various themed gardens, and especially enjoyed the New Zealand Garden and the Rose Garden.

We continued to find incredible picnic and camping spots this week. We camped facing the beach twice, watching the sunset and listening to the waves crash. We also camped by a lake one night, and had a perfect view of Mount Cook for two nights. We ate our lunches and dinners staring at sparkling blue lakes and surrounded by glaciers.

We also had some amazing stargazing opportunities. We experienced the first time seeing the same shooting star, and watched an incredibly bright moon dip below the mountains, allowing the stars to shine even brighter. Tekapo is designated as a Dark Sky Reserve, so we set an alarm to get up in the middle of the night to check out the stars from there. This was a week I was REALLY wishing I had a camera that took decent night photos!

Act of Kindness: This country is FULL of friendly people. So many locals took the time to chat with us this week, and they were always eager to help us out. We even had a full conversation with a local in the grocery store parking lot. When does that ever happen?! One local, however, went above and beyond. We met Steve at a campsite just outside Kaikoura, where he was cleaning the fish he had caught that day. He told us about his experience spear fishing butterfish (or green bone fish), and insisted on giving us some to try. We enjoyed a delicious, fresh fish dinner back at our campsite that night! Later on that evening, a few other travellers came by to give us their leftover gas cans to use with our stove. We are quickly realizing that people who frequent campsites are totally our people.