Dec 2007

The next day i got the bus to Paihia, a nice little beach town in the far north of NZ. Staying in another nice hostel near the beach, so spent the rest of the day making the most of the good weather on the beach.

On Christmas Eve I went to Waitangi, where the Maoris and the Brits signed the Treaty which is supposed to be the founding of NZ. Theres a good museum at the Treaty House and its set in nice grounds by the sea. In the afternoon I continued with my plan of not doing much over Christmas and went to the beach again. Probably sounds bad that I feel like a need a holiday from travelling. In the evening there was a carol singing thing down by the beach. Doesn't really seem right having carols outside in the sun, I'm dreaming of a white christmas just didn't seem very appropriate. But it was still better than the hip hop version of Away in a Manger.

Unfortunatly the plan for Christmas day at the beach didn't quite work out because of the weather, it turned into a normal wet Christmas day. Wasn't too bad in the morning so I still went to the beach, went swimming and had lunch at the beach. But in the afternoon it rained hard so I spent the rest of the day at the hostel, which wasn't too bad as it has its bar.

On Boxing Day the waether changed again, was bright and sunny with a good breeze, perfect as I'd booked to go sailing on a tall ship. This was a really good day, helped out a bit with the sails on the ship, sailed out around the bay. Went onto an island for a swim and a BBQ lunch and had good fun jumping into the sea by swinging from a rope attached to the mast. On the way back to the mainland I put on harnesses and climbed out onto the front of the boat which was good fun in the waves as the boat was going quite fast.

So its been a good Christmas, very different from being bck at home. Today I'm heading further north, to a place calld Kaitiai for a few days.

From Rotorua I got the bus to Thames, a small town on the Coromandel Peninsula, an area or NZ I hadn't been to before so it was good to be going somewhere new. Its a strange place, doesn't look like its changed much since about 1950. I stayed in a small hostel which compared to the rest of the town was suprisingly modern, must have been decorated in about 1970.

The next day I did a walk called The Pinnacles. It was a good walk up through a forest, with a steep section at the top which had ladders fixed to the rock, similar to via feratta in the Dolomites. I was lucky with the weather, made it to the top before the clouds came down and made it back to the hostel just before it started raining.nonetheless and the clouds kept away for us to have a good view from the top.

The next day I wasn't getting the bus until the afternoon so had the morning to explore what little there is to do in Thames. Borrowed an ancient bike for the hostel and cycled to the “Butterfly Gardens”, which only seemed to have about 6 species of butterfly all imported from Asia. After that I had an interesting walk. Most of the descriptions of walks in NZ make them sound really difficult, say you need loads of gear, good boots and will take hours longer than they actually do, so I ignored the description for this walk and set off in sandles. Unfortunatly for once the description had been right, no proper paths, a very muddy track up a steep hill. And when the instructions said follow the stream back down the hill, I hadn't thought it would literally mean that you hade to wade down the stream. But I made it back into the town in time to dry off a bit before getting the bus tro Whitianga, another small town further up the peninsula. Stayed here for a few days in a very nice hostel right on the beach.

The next day I went for a biot of a walk along the coast stopping off at some very nice beaches as the weather was very good. Then the next day I hired a bike and cycled about 20km to Hotwater beach. Unfortunatly the weather had changed and it was puring with rain so by the time I got to the beach I wass soaked. But that didn't matter too much as when you dig a hole in the sand at this beach it fills up with hot water, so you can dig your own spa pool. In some places the water is hot enough to burn you. So this was a bit of a strange experiance. Despite the pouring rain, the beach was still really busy and there were loads of people in waterproofs and with umbrellas trying to dig holes without them getting filled up with seawater.

The next day I just got the bus to Auckland where i stopped off on my way further north

I've continued travelling north and have spent the last week or so in North Island. I had a couple of days in Wellington seeing some of the sites there, then I travelled up to Tongariro in central north island. Here I spent 3 days doing another one of the great walks, called the Nothern Circuit. Again it was completly different from anyewhere else I've been in NZ as the walk was up around 3 volcanoes. The landscape was so varied it made for an interesting few days and was a good geology lesson for me. The first day of the walk went up one of the volcanoes, which still had snow on it, across craters, past lakes and vents of hydrogen sulphide. The second day was spent walking across the kind of landscape you would imagine is on the moon, dry, dusty land with strange shaped rock formations. The final day was through forest, up to more crater lakes and then followed a river and waterfalls to the end. The weather could have been better but it was still a really good walk.

From there I've travelled up to Rotorua, a town which is actually built in an ancient volcanic crater. Theres still a lot of thermal activity here, the town stinks of sulpher because of it but I've got used to that quickly. Today i've had a busy day doing a lot of the tourist things. I went to see an area of hot springs and lakes, where the hottest is apparently over 100'C. Decided to have a mud bath, followed by a cold shower and a natural spa. Suppossed to be very good for you, I'm not convinced it's had much of an effect but I enjoyed it. Also tried a bit of Maori wood carving, which just prooved to me good some of there art is as it was really difficult. Alkso went to the museum, which was eally interesting and I learnt a lot about the area.

Moving on again tomorrow, further north to Corromandel.

From being snowed in just a week earlier it was a bit of a change to be lying on a beach enjoying the sun. After leaving Wanaka I spent a few days travelling up the West Coast to the Abel Tasman National Park, stopping on the way at Franz Josef to see the glacier. Although one of New Zealnds great walks follows the coast through the Abel Tasman, I decided to have a change from walking and went on a 3 day sea-kayaking trip. Its something I hadn't tried before but would definitely try again. On the first day of the trip there were 6 of us kayaking with our guide Brad. He taught us all the basics then we set off paddleing along the caost for a few hours. It was a perfect day for it, no wind, a calm sea and clear skies so it gave us chance to get used to the kayaking and enjoy the sun. We stopped off at a couple of nice beaches on the way to Anchorage Bay where we camped for the night. Here there was a great beach for sunbathing, swimming and chance to walk part of the great walk track. That evening we found that not only was Brad an experianced kayaker but he was also a good cook. We were expecting normal camping food, dehydrated ready made meals etc but he made a very nice pasta dish and even a pavlova, never had such good food while camping before.

The second day, the wind had picked up and we weren't sure if we were going to be able to go anywhere, but Brad decided we should start out and turn back if it got too bad. It was quite sheltered in the bay but once we got out a bit further the sea was very rough and certainly put our new kayaking skills to the test. After a couple of hours we decided to try and land at Bark Bay, a bit short of the place we had intended to reach. But as we came into land there Brad decided it was too dangerous because of the waves, so we went back down the coast a little way to a more sheltered beach. After stopping there for a bit we decided to try going to Bark Bay again. The sea was stilll very rough but this time we made it. After setting up camp here we decided to try going for an afternoon paddle. Once we had got out of the bay the waves were soon even bigger than earlier, now about 2m high, so this made for a couple of hours of exciting paddling, tiring but very good fun. So despite the weather we had a really good day, even though a lot of other groups we met hadn't managed to do any kayaking at all.

On the third day we had a long days paddleing planned, back to where we had started. Luckily the sea was a bit calmer so we were able to get more than half way back in the morning. We were a bit disappointed not to have been able to paddle as far as the marine reserve the day before, but we were lucky this morning and saw sealions and dolphins. Had a very nice lunch break on an empty beach before having an easy paddle back to the start. So it was a nice end to another really good trip.

After finishing the Milford track I had enjoyed a few relaxing days in Queenstown and Wanaka before starting the next part of my trip, climbing Mount Aspiring. The trip began with meeting my guide Murray from Aspiring Guides and going through the equipment I needed and a making some plans for the next few days. Although early in the morning it had looked like the climb would need to be postponed for a day because of the weather that had been forecast, conditions were better than expected so in the afternoon we headed out to a farm where we were to get a helicopter up to Bevan Col on the edge of the glacier below Mt. Aspiring. I had never been in a helicopter before so was excited about this and finally getting going. The helicopter ride probably took about half an hour and was amazing. Flew up over the beautiful hills and mountains surrounding Wanaka. Flying along the valley that we planned to walk out of in a few days time was a great opportunity to get a better perspective of what we were planning.

When the helicopter flew off leaving us on the glacier it seemed like we were suddenly in a different world from the hot sunny valley that we had just left. The sky had cleared and there were great views across the glacier to the Colin Todd hut, where we were going to stay and it gave us our first good luck at the route we were planning to take up the north west ridge of Aspiring. We sorted out our gear and got roped up for the 2 hour walk across the glacier to the hut. The glacier had few crevasses so the walk was good practise for getting used to moving together. When we arrived at the hut it was already quite busy. The hut just has a single room with 12 bunks and a cooking area, we were lucky to arrive just in time to claim the last beds. That evening there were actually 20 people at the hut, so quite a few people had to bivvy outside in the snow. Had a nice evening in the hut getting organised for the next day and meeting other climbers.

When my alarm went off at 3am I was already awake and ready to get up and get going as other people had been getting up since 2. Just after 4am we left the hut and started walking across the glacier to the base of where the main part of the climb was to start. Despite the temperature being -11'C once we started walking we soon warmed up and it already seemed like it was going to be a good day for getting to the summit. There was only a light wind, the sky was clear and there was a bright moon so it wasn't too dark for the walk in. With the stars and the moonlight reflecting off the snow the scene was amazing.

We reached the bottom of the main section of the climb, known as the ramp at about dawn. Good timing as it meant that we wouldn't have to be doing one of the most difficult parts of the route by tourch light. The climb up the ramp was hard work as it was apparently harder conditions than normal, with steep, hard ice making it more difficult to get good placements with ice axes and crampons. But after a couple of hours of climbing we had made it to the saddle where we were able to have a good rest. From here you could see up the final section of the climb to the summit, which still looked a long way off. From here it took another couple of hours to reach the top where all our effort was rewarded. It was a perfect day to be on the summit, no wind and a clear sunny day so you could see for miles around. Over towards the coast, across to Mount Cook which looked very impressive standing high above the surrounding hills and back down the route that we had just climbed.

The way down followed the same way we came up. It was nice to be able to relax a bit more on the way down as we had reached the summit in good time, just after 10am. The most difficult part of the route down was the bottom section of the ramp as by the time we reached there the sun had been on the slope for a few hours and the snow had got quite soft and there was ice fall coming down from above. The day before a women injured her arm on this section of the climb down and later on in the day another guy had his helmet smashed by falling ice. The final obstacle on the climb was a large crevass at the bottom of the ramp, this took a bit of time to get around as the ice bridge across to the main part of the glacier was now very soft and unstable. But once we reached the main glacier it was just a good walk back up to the hut. We arrived back at the hut mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day eating and drinking to recover from a perfect days climbing. In the evening we made plans for the next day, a route across the glacier and a bit more climbing to reach French Ridge hut.

But overnight the weather changed and we woke up to find the hut in a snow storm. Waited a couple of hours to see if the weather was going to improve then had to abandon our plans for the day and instead we spent the day stuck in the hut. This actually turned being a good day anyway, a few people had left the day before so there was a bit more space in the hut. Spent the day with a good group of people, drinking a lot of tea and seeing what interesting meals we could create from the random food that was left in the hut store cupboard. There were a few guides staying in the hut and they taught us various rope techniques for things like crevasse rescue, so the day passed quickly. In the evening the snow stopped, the cloud lifted and there was a great sunset over the surrounding mountains.

The next day the weather was perfect again so we started our descent. As we didn't have so much time left we descended from Bevan Col off the glacier and down into the valley where we had a nice walk through the forest along the river. We spent the final night in the valley in Aspiring hut, which left us with just a couple of hours further to walk out back to the road the next day.