I heart Fiordland

This was our fourth weekend in Fiordland and I think it may have been the best one! Instead of an epic hike in the mountains, this was a weekend spent on the water.

Keith found the best backpackers place yet! Freestone Backpackers is a series of lodges perched up on a hill with amazing views of Lake Manapouri-for only 60 bucks a night!

From New Zealand

Keith and I both checked out Doubtful Sound, but in different ways. While Keith went on a two day kayaking trip, I went on a cruise of the sound (which is actually a fjord). Since I still had a wounded hand and couldn’t go on Keith’s 2 day kayak trip, I did an all day cruise of Doubtful Sound. I was truly hoping that I would be the only single on the trip, knowing that if there was another person on their own I would be stuck chatting with them. It’s not that I’m anti-chatting, it’s quite the opposite, but on such a peaceful, solitary place as Doubtful I was really looking forward to enjoying it on my own.

Doubtful is more remote than Milford Sound is, so that means less crowds and a little longer journey to get there. Here is how to get to Doubtful Sound.  First-get picked up at your hotel. After waiting at the end of the drive way of my backpacker, enjoying stunningly gorgeous views while standing in the middle of the road, the bus for my Doubtful Sound cruise finally showed up. It was hard to tell how many singles/couples were on the bus, but there was an even number of 8 people, so I knew. Then taken to the dock where you get on a boat to cross Lake Manapouri (it was a beautiful morning!)

From New Zealand

Then you take a bus to the Manapouri hydroelectric power station through an incredibility long underground tunnel-I have to imagine that the drive was very similar to Dr. Evil's commute to work! There you just check out the largest hydroelectric power station in NZ.

From New Zealand

Then you get back on the bus and drive about 45 mins (finally!) to Doubtful Sound where you hop on another boat, that luckily doesn't go fast, for three hours of checking out the sound/fjord. It was after the trip on the boat across Lake Manapouri and the bus ride to the power station we finally got to Deep Cove and to the boat for our cruise that I got trapped in conversation. There’s nothing like a 19 year old British girl to help put life into perspective and make you realize that ‘Oh my God, being 19 feels like light years ago!’ Talking to someone who’s idea of home is living at home with her parents and brothers and her reaction to the fact I don’t live in the state as my family-and prefer it that way-was pure shock.

What really cracked me up the most was her reaction to the idea of marriage. It went something like this: ‘My husband is on an overnight kayaking trip, so I want to keep my eyes out for kayaks.’ ‘Oh my God, you’re married! How long have you been married?!’ Almost four years.’ A look of shocking, disgusted horror rips across her face, like I had just told her I was actually on the cruise to find Cthulhu’s sunken tomb and that when I did all life as she knows it will be destroyed by this ancient alien squid looking god. Really marriage isn’t that bad! Well, maybe when you’re 19 it seems like it is. Then she asks what her face already did, ‘It is really horrible?’ What do you say!? I laughed and ‘I’m sure for some people it is, but for me it’s really been a lot of fun.’ She just looked at me suspiciously. Obviously I was part of some sort of conspiracy to make people think marriage wasn’t truly awful.  It was time to escape this line of questioning and retreat to the top of the boat.

It was so windy and rainy that only two other people were up there, an adorable couple of extremely mismatched heights. Finally, peace and quiet and amazing views, this is what I came here for.  From here you can see just how huge Doubtful Sound really is. There were parts about the cruise that were slightly disappointing: I was hoping that we would get right into the huge waterfalls like we had on the cruise in Milford Sound and we didn’t and we also didn’t really see any wildlife. But after thinking that this cruise is only twice as long as the cruise I went on in Milford and how Doubtful is three times bigger it’s not surprising that there just isn’t time to play around in the waterfalls like that. And the wildlife, the pod of dolphins that live in the Sound were waiting around to put on a show for Keith and his kayaking group, so that was cool with me.

It looked like it was going to be another cloudy, rainy day on a boat in Fiordland, but no! The clouds started to clear and I got some blue sky!!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

So I got kind of the best of both worlds with loads of waterfalls and warm clear day, and I didn't need my nautical themed pashmina afghan at all!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

On the way back to Manapouri I finally got to see a Kea-I was so jealous of Keith who saw one last weekend! These cheeky buggers are the only mountain parrots in the world and are also known for ripping apart backpacks and damaging cars. I guess this makes up for not seeing any dolphins, but of course Keith saw a bunch of dolphins!

From New Zealand

This may have been our last weekend in Fiordland during this trip, at least it was a great time!

The breathtaking Kepler Track

The main question about this weekend's adventure was will I or won't I. When we booked the Kepler Track I was perfectly healthy, but now I was more than a little worried about my bum hand giving me trouble, especially if we got a fraction of the crappy weather we got during the Routeburn. It wasn't until Wednesday evening that I had finally decided to just suck it up and go and I'm really glad I did!

The Kepler is a little longer than the Routeburn, well actually almost twice as long, with the Routeburn being 32 kilometers and the Kepler comes in at 60 kilometers. Combine that with the fact that we planned on doing in the same number of days we did the Routeburn-3 days. But Sunday was the only day rain was in the forecast, so hopefully we were going to get lucky.

With a beautiful, warm and sunny day on Friday and the first days hiking not really hard (I mostly kept the whining to a minimum), I was torn between the feelings of wow, this isn't really that hard-I can totally do this and being worried that I was being lulled into a false sense of security by the trail. But the views helped keep my mind off of worrying!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

The huts always seems to be set in such beautiful places and the view from the Luxmore Hut was no exception! It had both a great view of Lake Te Anau and a great sunset.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

The next morning we got up to a crisp, clear beautiful day without a cloud in the sky-this could not have been more different than the Routeburn! I have no doubt that we appreciated how spectacularly beautiful the hike was a thousand times more than we would have if we hadn't been rained on the whole time last time we tramped!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

The second day was the alpine section of the hike and follows mountain ridges almost the whole time. It was a perfect day to be hiking it! The wind kicked up a few times and I realized just how lucky we were with such great weather, any more wind and I think we could have gotten blown off the mountain!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

With rain still in the forecast, possibly heavy, we got going pretty early Sunday morning for our last and longest (over 22 kilometers!) part of the hike.

From New Zealand

While it was really cloudy we lucked out-again!-and made out without a drop of rain!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

It's now Monday and I'm enjoying the best part of tramping-lying around on the sofa doing nothing! This is mostly because I can barely walk, but I think I've earned quite a bit of lazing around time!

A very Kiwi Easter

This weekend was our first major holiday in New Zealand: Easter and they really know how to celebrate a long weekend holiday! But we couldn't just celebrate this weekend, we also had to move.

We reserved Saturday for moving into an actual house. That's right-no more living in a half a garage! We will not miss our landlord constantly working (and painting!) his crappy old cars in the other half of the garage. Of course moving has to have a hitch or two and for us in came in getting locked out our new place (after we moved everything in!), so after a little breaking and entering we could finally settle in-it took about an hour to break in but at least no one called the cops on us!

From New Zealand

As far and Keith and I knew all the Easter festivities were going on Sunday, so we figured we wouldn't miss much moving on Saturday. While we were driving across town we saw what looked like a bigger version of the usual farmers market in downtown Alex. The market seemed like a perfect place to stop for lunch in between trips from the old place to the new one.

While we were driving around trying to find a parking place to grab a bite, we saw it! Oh my goodness we were SO unprepared! There lying in the grass were over 20,000 dead rabbits. It was part of the 19th annual Great Easter Bunny Massacre Hunt. For pictures please click on this link or this one! And I didn't even have a spare camera in my purse! The bunnies were all shot in a 24 hour hunt by teams of hunters that each get a specific block of farm land to kill as many bunnies as possible. The goal is to eradicate rabbits and other pests on rural farming properties in the district. I was also really not prepared for the smell of over 24,000 bead bunnies, some dead for about 24 hours, it was so incredibly disgusting! We've seen lots of redneck things in our day (standing in line for the Ted Nugent concert watching amateur WWF wrestling at the Oregon State fair comes to mind) but I think this tradition kind of takes the cake!

For as gross as Saturday was, Sunday was delicious! We spent all day at the Clyde Food and Wine Festival. And did we eat and drink! The lovely wrap from my splint doesn't keep secrets very well, since it is stained with wine, strawberry, onions and french fry grease and more. Almost all the wineries were from the Alex/Clyde area and they do not have tasting rooms, so we really had to get busy and blaze through them, so quite honestly I can't say what was a favorite-I think they all were!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

They had some pretty great live music. The day started with laid back jazz and ended (at 5 pm) with everyone dancing and rocking out to music from the 60's and 70's.(check out the old guy in the gray sweater-he was getting pretty frisky with the old ladies :)

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Easter Monday we took a drive to Skippers, the remnants of Skippers Township, once the largest gold settlement on the Shotover River. All that's left are a few bits of and pieces hotels and an area with a refurbished schoolhouse and residence.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Driving along a road carved into the side of the canyon, it was hard not to imagine how hard getting there with horse drawn carriages and how absolutely isolating it would be to live there! But there was big news there in 1901 when the Skippers suspension bridge opened, at the time it was the most spectacular of its kind in New Zealand and you still drive across it!

From New Zealand

Well there ya go, breaking and entering, massacring bunnies, and drinking all day-sounds like just about the best Easter weekend yet!

A few days in Ranfurly

Monday morning was a bit of mad rush. Sunday night we were saying our good byes to the family as they were getting on the road early Monday morning to drive back to Christchurch to fly back to the States. We were also up (very!) early Monday morning so we could get it Ranfurly by 8 am since Keith that was when Keith thought he had to be there to start work. Of course we were early!

Keith was filing in this week for the only doctor in Ranfurly, which meant he was on hospital call 24/7 (actually just 24/4 since we were only there for four days) and he covered the clinic-so it had the potential to get pretty crazy busy, but lucky for us it was just moderately busy.

From New Zealand

While in Ranfurly I got a chance to get up close and personal with the medical system here. After my incredibly graceful fall on the way to Milford my hand was still (and still is) really painful and the bruising on my hand was pretty gross-time for a trip to the doctor! Of course Keith is the only doc in the area, so he looked at it (for the millionth time!) and set me up with an appointment for an X-Ray. I got lucky and an X-Ray tech just happened to be in Ranfurly that day so I had my X-Ray a couples hours later. The tech thought I had a small fracture at the base of my 5th metacarpal (aka pinky), Keith agreed and I got a lovely fiberglass splint . The cost for all of this was a whopping zero dollars-doesn't socialized medicine suck! ;) Since we filed an ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) claim, my lovely spill onto the gravel was covered.

From New Zealand

This kind of hindered my plans of driving around and taking pictures of the area. Using my big camera has been a challenge and I was pretty sure I couldn't really drive with my one hand, so I was on foot. But that wasn't really a problem, Ranfurly is an adorable little town with a strong art deco theme, and it's so small it doesn't take much walking to feel like you're in the middle of nowhere!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

The Central Otago Rail Trail goes through Ranfurly (so everyone assumed I fell off my bike on the trail-that would be such a better story!). Most people bike the rail trail and along the trail towards Ranfurly they have a collection of cute old bikes that goes along with their art deco personality.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

I have to mention Forry's, the restaurant where I had breakfast on the last day we were there. I had be be out of the place we were staying early because the volunteer cleaning ladies were coming, so I went out for breakfast. Forry's had been recommended to me by a women working at the local museum, but I have to say it didn't look like much when I walked it. It said it had breakfast but I didn't see any menus, so I walked up and asked and found our my choices were cold breakfast (cereal and stuff) or hot breakfast (a delicious plate of sausage, bacon, toast, eggs, tomatoes and hasbrowns). I really wanted the hot breakfast but I knew I couldn't cut up and eat just about everything in the hot breakfast with my not very coordinated or strong left hard-so disappointed! So I said to the waitress: I guess I'll get the cold breakfast because I can't cut up anything. I couldn't believe what she said next! She offered to cut up everything so I could get the hot breakfast! You have got to be kidding me! People are so freaking nice here! And it was such a delicious breakfast-go to Forry's if you go to Ranfurly!

On Thursday Keith got a report back from the actual radiologist in Dunedin who said that my hand is not broken, which is good because it should heal faster. Dr. Keith says I should still wear my big splint for another week but hopefully after that the pain will have gone away! I really hope so! Just because it's not broken doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like the dickens!!

One more thing! Today it's BJ's 6th birthday! A big happy birthday to the best puppy in the world!

Milford Adventures!

The whole fam spent Friday at Milford Sound, although the trip there was an adventure in it self!

There were tons of places to stop on the way to Milford and we were lucky we could even get there as there had been a massive storm on Monday and the road had just opened at 10:30 Friday morning!

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If only I had paid attention to the signs! About 10 minutes after these pictures were taken I found myself on my knees in the wet gravel after tripping over a piece of metal sticking out of the gravel-awesome!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We made it to Milford in mostly one piece and although it was really cloudy, the Sound did not disappoint!

From New Zealand

Mom and I went on a Mitre Peak cruise of the sound. They have the smallest boats of the many cruise companies so they can get really close to all the waterfalls, which was fantastic! To top it off, there were only 8 other people on the cruise-perfection!!

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Keith, Colleen, and Randy spent their time kayaking of the sound. They were pretty easy to spot as they were they only kayakers out there!

From New Zealand

The cruise was great! It may have been cold and rainy but that meant we got 100's of waterfalls! We cruised almost all the way to the Tasmen Sea, where it finally stopped raining.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

On the way back to land, 6 dolphins were spotted and couple got really close to the boat! Our skipper said they only see dolphins about once a week!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Rudyard Kipling described Milford Sound as the eighth Wonder of the World and it was recently voted the number one spot in the “101 must-do’s for Kiwis”, so hopefully you'll believe me when I say do not miss it if you ever come to New Zealand!

Just the beginning

With the family coming for such a short period of time this week, we really had to work to try to get everything in that we could! They flew into Christchurch and drove down the east coast to Dunedin, and then finally made it over to us in Alex on Wednesday evening.

We started their whirlwind Central Otago introduction at the Chatto Creek Tavern where I hope they got a good taste of the delicious wine, amazing food, and interesting and friendly locals.

From New Zealand

The next day our ultimate destination was Te Anu, but we had a few stops on the way. One stop was adorable Arrowtown.

From New Zealand

The next day we spent in Milford Sound, which deserves its own blog entry, so that's what it will get!

Left to my own devices on Stewart Island

On Saturday Keith got up early to do the Rakiura Track, which is 36 kilometers long. While most people do the track in three days, Keith is not most people and did it in two days. For this reason, I slept in and spent the day on my own instead of tramping as fast as I could through the mud!

Even though I was on my own I was not completely lazy! The rainy morning on the Island meant that I had the day hiking trails to myself, which was lovely! There are a huge numbers of birds on Stewart Island as well as Ulva Island and my favorite bird the tui was all over the place while I was hiking on Saturday and it was hard to think that R2-D2 was following me and to not smile every time I heard them!

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While I was hiking, drizzle turned into rain turned into incredibly windy and pouring down, so eventually I had to go inside, but I really didn't want to miss out on anything on the island!

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Luckily in the afternoon the sun finally came out!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

That evening, while the sun was still out, I made it up to Observation Rock, which is supposed to be a good place to watch both sunrise and sunset. While I was up there is was clear there wouldn't be a great sunset, but it was so quiet and peaceful I stayed for almost an hour watching the light change. I was shocked that not another person came up there the whole time I was there since the point is only 1 kilometer from the only town on the island, Oban!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Hopefully Keith has time to blog his hike soon! But the family (Jean, Colleen, and Randy) are officially in the country and they'll be in Alex tomorrow, so I think we'll be a little busy for a few days!