Cooling off in New Zealand!

On Saturday night we arrived into Christchurch airport very late, around midnight.  There were quite a few Americans on our flight from Sydney- I even met 5 guys from South Carolina (the first people I have met at all from SC) who are studying at the University of Sydney.  On the plane, I sat next to a drunk, professional boxer from New Hampshire- I’m not sure how successful he is, as we were sitting in coach. Getting through customs was a breeze, and getting our luggage was easy too.  Walking through the arrivals terminal, however, was an interesting sight.  Atleast 100 people, mostly young people, were curled up on the floor under blankets or sleeping bags, some partnered up, and some in huge groups.  I talked to a lady in the terminal who works at the airport, and she said that since the earthquake backpackers have slept in the airport, as so many hostels were destroyed downtown. The night before, she said they counted 180 people sleeping in the terminal.  There is literally no place for everyone to stay who is trying to get into the South Island of New Zealand.

I worked out a deal with a taxi driver who took us to Old Country Cottage Hostel.  The hostel was really nice. We got two rooms with two twin beds each, and Laura and I had a little cottage to sleep in.  It was very cozy; the kitchens had fresh baked bread, there were little courtyards between each “house,” and the staff helped us find a rental car very quickly.  Our rental car company wasn’t planning to pick us up until noon, so we walked around town a little bit, and attempted to go to a grocery store, New World.  The streets were pretty empty where we were (not downtown or anything), and as we passed store windows we could look inside and see destruction.  The most heartbreaking for me was looking into a petstore.  It’s owners posted a note on the door that they were running the business at home; the inside was cluttered with broken glass shards, cages, and mess everywhere. I imagine they were attempted to avoid it as long as possible.   The grocery store ended up being closed, but Laura and I bought a SIM card at a little convenience shops, and we all grabbed sandwiches for lunch at a bakery.  Sandwiches were about $3.50- it was so nice not to pay a lot for lunch, considering Australia is so expensive. Things in New Zealand seem much cheaper and better value, even with the favored US dollar (which makes it even BETTER!).

Other than the earthquake bit, I really like Christchurch.  The city is beginning to turn reds, yellows and oranges with the onset of autumn, so it is really charming.  Also, not everything was destroyed; many places still look like my imagined view of Christchurch- cottage-y and quaint.  It was disappointing not to be able to go to church in Cathedral Square or even into the city at all, though, as that part is still completely closed off because of all the damage.

At the rental car company we only registered Ashley and Laura as drivers because they are the only 21-year olds.  My birthday is in less than a month, so I am a little frustrated I am not allowed to drive, but whatever…  Anyway, we set off out of Christchurch onto Arthur’s Pass Highway, or the Great Alpine Highway.  The highway is really famous and a very popular drive right across the south island of New Zealand.  It passes everything scenic.  I did a lot of research on our drives before we came, so I had some places in mind for us to stop on our way.

Our first stop (we didn’t make it very far) were the Castle Hill Rocks.  The rocks angle out of the mountains and are very large.  Some of them are climbable, so the place is really a rock climbers dream.  Caleb and Ashley attempted to climb to the top, but I found a nice rock to enjoy the views. The landscape at this point in the drive was just starting to change from what we saw outside the city, tall wall-like bushes, small sheep pastures, and green, to prairie-like flatland and grassy mountains.  The mountains were very different, though; some had rocks on the top, others had just grass on the top, and even others had shrubs dotting the top.  I couldn’t have counted the number of sheep had I tried, and literally as we walked around the huge rocks (where we could see no sheep) we heard baa-ing off in the distance.  It was pretty spectacular, and it was hard to talk Caleb into leaving, as it was any boys’ play place.

Almost right after leaving the Castle Hill Rocks we ran into the Cave Stream cave.  I had been reading about the cave, and how easy it was so cave it.  We prepared ourselves to venture into the cave by grabbing Ashley’s flashlight, and I put on my hiking shows, and we walked down to the cave entrance.  On our way we saw a family of four wandering out of the cave, with water to their waists, and rubber boots on.  They said it was a good day for caving, and that we should definitely go in.  I would love to know how the cave was formed; it was round on the entrance/outside, and the water steadily got deeper.  We wandered into the cave, and the water went to our waists.  Wading in deeper was challenging because it was so cold; the air wasn’t too cold, but the water was almost unbearable for long periods.  We probably made it 400 meters into the cave before we decided that one flashlight was not enough, and that we had gone deep enough, and that it was very dark and very cold.  We turned around and headed back out of the cave, and were happy to reach the entrance once again.  Considering we were the only people around who were in the cave, and really the only people around the cave, we felt pretty ballsy to have gone as far in as we did, and enjoyed our bit of adrenaline for cave diving the rest of the day.

On the way down to Franz-Josef, we stopped at a little conveinience store in a small town.  HUGE ice cream cones were only NZ$2.00!!  Coming from Australia, we were a bit sticker shocked at how CHEAP it is to eat here, once again. We grabbed some pasta to make for dinner during the trip, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and granola bars for snacks.  We figured we would need snacks and a meal on the road, and open-faced peanut butter sandwiches usually curb any craving! Yummy.

We missed a lot of things on the drive down New Zealand’s west coast because we spent so much time stopping during our drive on the Arthur’s Pass road.  It was dark by the time we turned south down the coast, and eventually we arrived at our hostel in Franz-Josef around 10pm.  Before we checked in, we decided to try our luck at finding glowworms in a local cave.  We found the Terrace Walk on the outskirts of town, and set off in search of the worm cave.  I had been told the walk was about 15 minutes into the rainforest from the road.  It was VERY dark, and we only had one flashlight.  From everything I know, there is nothing to hurt us in the forests of New Zealand,  but we imagined the worst, and eventually we all decided about 5 minutes into the walk that it was a bad idea.  As we were turning around, Laura spotted glowworms just off of the trail.  We got to get a peak of the teensy tiny little worms anchored on the roots of an overturned tree.  I was glad we got to see the glowworms, and I was also glad we weren’t wandering deep into the rainforest so late in the night.  We had had many big adventures during the day; my bravery had almost run out! J

The Glow-worm cottages were so nice, one of the nicest hostels I have stayed in so far!  We were given a 4 person bunk bed ensuite, so we had our own bathroom (WOW!), our own ‘kitchen sink,’ and our own toaster and fridge, for only $26 p/p.  I felt very spoiled to be staying in such a nice place!

Originally, when we tried to book a half-day of glacier hiking on Fox Glacier for Monday morning we were told the trip was full; after lots of persuasion and use of my southern charm (or attempt at it) we were added to the list, and told to arrive at 8:00 for check-in.  I brought my alarm clock on the trip, so I was the person responsible for waking everyone up in time for us to make the 30 minute drive to Fox Glacier in the morning.  However, when Monday morning came, my alarm never went off. I woke up at 8:00 (naturally) and realized I had set it for a PM time.  We hustled everyone up and out of bed, and quickly checked out of our hostel.  When we called the place, we were told that the trip would not wait for us (and that our spots had been given away), and that we would either have to forgo glacier hiking all together or sign up for the day long trip.  The dilemma over the day long, trip, however, was that if we left so late in the day for Queenstown we would miss many highlights on the drive because it would quickly get dark.

One problem about traveling in a group is usually that it is hard to get people to agree. In our case, however, we all realized that we would have to give one or the other up: glacier hiking or scenic drive.  We all easily decided to do the full day of glacier hiking. 

We had worn many layers of clothing, and our guides suited us up into big, tough boots, waterproof jackets and trousers, and hats and mittens.  I got a backpack from the company as well.  After a short bus ride, and a tough hike to the base of the ice, we put on our crampons.  I had never even heard of crampons before, so I was interested to see how they worked.   They were simply metal spikes that you can attach to the bottom of your shoes to grip the ice with straps.  Because we were doing the full day hike, our crampons were really intense looking and very sturdy. We were also given ‘alpine sticks’ to help us balance on the ice during our hike. Our guide, Scott, grew up on a New Zealand sheep farm just outside of the townships of Fox glacier and Frantz-Josef.  He was pretty young and adventurous, but also very knowledgeable about the area.

 Once we were ready to get on the ice, we went up stairs made between the walls of a deep crevice. We hiked straight up the glacier on a path forged for us by Scott; he would chop little steps or level places for us to step every now and then with his ice pick.  Even though the guides go every day, it seemed like he does something a little different every day, as he had to forge the path as we went.  As we were stepping across a small crevice I fell on the ice; I can witness that it was truly hard ice, and it really hurt.  One thing I was reminded of was that even when you don’t fall ‘hard,’ falling on ice is always falling hard, and almost always hurts. 

The hike was challenging, and I felt invigorated and worn out all at the same time.  Our guide took us to holes we could climb in, and caves we could check out.  There was  a lot to see on the ice.  We ate lunch at a rocky area on the top of the glacier. One benefit of the full day hike was that we got to go up to the faster moving area, where more holes and caves and ice arches form.  The Fox Glacier is one of the only glaciers in the world that is still getting bigger.  The glacier is formed by snowfall in the basin of the glacier.   Overtime, the snow solidifies into ice (5-6 years), and as more snow is pushed down and into the basin, the ice is pushed down the valley.  As the ice pushes down the valley, moving, it forges the valley.  Our guide said that on average the glacier is moving 1 meter per day- WOW!  As the story goes, a guy lost his engraved, fancy lighter in the 1970s in the top basin of the glacier.  In the late 90s the lighter was found at the bottom of the glacier, and the lighters’ speed was calculated over that period of time- it traveled over 13 km!

On our way back down the glacier we stopped at an awesome naturally formed ice cave.  We walked down into it and enjoyed looking up into the hole that formed from the melting water dripping down.  There were two little chambers to the cave that were big enough to slip into.  It was pretty fascinating. We took a different path down the glacier, but by this time I was pretty worn out and tired, and ready to warm up. 

As soon as we got down glacier hiking we jumped on the road to Queenstown.  It got dark before we turned inland, but we got to watch the sunset from the western coast of New Zealand! It was absolutely magnificent, but because it was similar to many other sunsets I have seen, pretty comforting.  Even in this side of the world, some things don’t change. The drive to Queenstown was about 4 hours; it was sad that we missed so many great views because we had to drive in the dark, but because of our time constraints I understand that something had to be given up. 

We arrived into Queenstown right around 9pm, and checked into our hostel on Shotover Street, Base Backpackers.  The hostel was really big and nice, and in our 4-person room we each received towels (WOW, a luxury in hostels) and teabags and sugar for NZ$29 p/p.  For dinner, I decided I deserved a big delicious meal, as I hadn’t eaten much at all on the trip so far, and I worked really hard glacier hiking.  A famous burger place, Fergburger’s Queenstown, was located right across from Base, so we were all happy to zip on over and grab delicious, huge burgers to satisfy our hunger.  They were some of the best burgers I have tasted since leaving the states, and I can’t think of anything I would have rather had.  By the time dinner was finished and we had gotten back to our room, it was past 11, so we decided to hit the sack, and get a good nights rest…