Finding My Fix: Chronicles of a Travel Junkie

It’s been a while since I last updated, and things are getting all out of order, but I’m doing my best to put up the last of the photos and stories (there are about 6 posts worth left to publish).

So, I left off having left Sue and Ron in Christchurch, and boarding an Atomic Shuttle bound for Hokitika via Arthur’s Pass. The scenery in the mountains was quite spectacular. I had never seen anything like what I can only guess were glacial plateaus, the left-overs of rivers of ice thousands of years ago creeping slowly toward the seas. The summits of mountains did not drop to form the sorts of ridges I’m used to in the American Rockies, Appalachians, and Sierra Nevadas. Instead, between the peaks lay expanses of flat land a kilometer or more across at the narrowest of places, and cracked down their middle by great canyons filled with gravel carved for a giant’s driveway. It was like a desert, treeless, barren.

From the bus. Still on the Canterbury Plain.

Arthur’s Pass. Not the most exciting place in the world.

Two girls were on the bus with me the whole 4+ hours to Hokitika. One was Japanese, and I think the other was Korean. The bus driver dropped them at a hostel in Hokitika. He told me, “I often drop Japanese tourists off at this hostel. The owner is a Japanese woman married to a New Zealander, so they can talk. They usually like that.”

Then he dropped me a few blocks away at the i-site. I had about 3 hours to kill until my next bus to take me to Fox Glacier, so I dropped off my bag and groceries for safe-keeping (something I hadn’t realised can be done for free at i-sites in New Zealand) and booked the next few days of my trip. A walking tour at Fox Glacier, busfare to Queenstown, and a bungy jump off the Karawau Bridge were all in order. The friendly woman who worked there, Maureen was her name, if memory serves, talked me into the jump although she informed me that she herself did not have the guts. A bit of advice for anyone planning to travel to New Zealand, take advantage of the free service provided at the i-sites; makes life so much easier! Also, Kiwi Experience is convenient to do before you leave, but bus systems in New Zealand are wonderful. Atomic Shuttle was very inexpensive, and if you’re studying in New Zealand, Intercity and Newman’s Coachlines provide student discounts. So after Maureen set me up, I headed to the beach I was told would be fairly spectacular. I can’t say it wasn’t.

Family in Hokitika.

New Zealand Clouds.

Hackey Sack.

I bored of that quickly, however, so I headed back to the info center to plan the rest of my trip… snorkeling and kayaking in Milford Sound, and busfare all the way through to Milford and back out to Te Anau. Then I took a walk around, coming across the great variety of tourist trap stores and sites to be found in the rather small town of Hokitika. On one street could be found the three-or-four-story clock tower, the city hall, the Sheep Station with a giant, I can only guess fiber-glass, sheep over its front entrance, a war memorial and numerous ponamou jewelry stores.

City Council, Sheep Station, War Memorial all in one.

I decided to take a rest and wait for the bus on the lawn of the i-site. Unfortunately it was growing rather cold (this was October, still spring), and the shadow of the building was creeping across the lawn and cooling it down even further. My bus, Atomic Shuttle was an hour and a half late, much more on time than one fellow traveler who had been waiting for a Kiwi Experience bus which was about three hours late. But no worries mate, time is aplenty, and patience isn’t just a virtue in New Zealand, it somehow rides on the first chromosome of every living Kiwi. And it’s infectious.

Waiting for the bus.

As I waited, I had the opportunity to check out bus schedules and see what I could fit into my all too short 10 more days on the South Island. Whenever you find yourself stuck, waiting for a flight, a bus, anything, take advantage, enjoy the brief time you have to do nothing but wait, and maybe make something of it. My bus did finally come, and so did the Kiwi Experience bus, and I was headed on toward Fox Glacier.

Stretch your legs.

The ride was, from an American perspective not a bad one, though I’m sure some people in the world might disagree… about 4 or 5 hours. It gave a glimpse of temperate rainforest complete with rainfall, ocean, river, and Franz Joseph Glacier. When the van pulled up at the Ivory Towers (I hope that’s what it was called), I could see just how itty-bitty the town of Fox Glacier is. Franz Joseph was twice its size. The glaciers themselves, I am told, are about equally spectacular, but having only seen one, I personally have no basis for comparison.

Ivory Towers was a great hostel. It was clean, and well equipped with internet (as expensive as it was), phone service (which you’ll need cause there is no cellphone service in Fox Glacier), book exchange, relatively comfy TV room and hundreds of movies, etc. I was housed in room #2 with an Indian Aussie, and Michael, an Englishman from a small town whose name I couldn’t spare the brain power to understand, let alone remember. His van had broken down in Fox Glacier so he was spending more time there than he’d planned. Both of them were friendly, and as those traveling alone often do, I grew somewhat attached to them. I watched Braveheart with Michael who pointed out to me that Mel Gibson likes making movies where he kills the English.

The day after I arrived in Fox Glacier, I headed down to the place where the Alpine Tours Company meets. About twenty of us headed into the boot room to get our oversized, well worn glaciel-trecking boots and crampons. We then loaded into the buses that were to take us to the base of the glacier. It wasn’t exactly like the glaciers I’d seen in photos of the Antarctic in the museum in Christchurch, but it was still something. I’d never seen a glacier before, let alone walked on one, especially one in a rainforest!

Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers are so special because they are actually in temperate rainforest, two of the only glaciers in the world that are located in temperate climates (as in not in areas marked by permafrost or days that never see the sun in winter). The only others are located in Chile so far as I know.

Well, the half day tour I was signed up for cost about NZ$55 with a student discount of $5. The group of twenty something split in two and I ended up in the group with Andy as our tourguide. The group was filled with Aussies, a few other Americans, and one Canadian. We hiked up to the base of the glacier which was fenced off and complete with warning signs in five different languages including the universal language of pictures. Andy pointed out to us the danger of getting too close to either the glacier or the bouldered cliffs rising up either side, as avalanches of rock and ice sent a whip echoing through the canyon. He also showed us where the glacier used to reach. It has been receeding for the last few hundred years or so, moving fairly quickly, about 40cm a year if I remember correctly. By receeding, they mean the location of its base is moving farther and farther from the sea, not that the ice and water is actually moving backward, and uphill.

We walked up several hundred meters above sea-level, climbing the precarious boulders alongside the glacier, to where we would step onto the ice. We stopped, had a snack, tucked our pants into our boots for a very stylish look, put on our crampons and grabbed our walking sticks with the spikes on the bottoms. Our crampons, which are basically spikes buckled to the bottoms of your boots, turned out to be useful as we crunched our way up and down stairs cut into the ice. It was all quite noisy, spectacular and a bit cold.

Fox Glacier

When we reached the bottom, we found that the Keas (alpine parrots) were working their corner of the island. They begged for food and posed for paparazzis. Apparently these parrots will eat the rubber off of cars, and are endangered because they are allergic to the junk food people feed them. My sources are not scientific, so if I am wrong, don’t sue me, please.

Kea

I didn’t photoshop this at all!

The following day, I woke up, showered, packed, and headed outside to catch the Atomic Shuttle around 10am. I was sad to leave, again, because again I had grown attached to the place and the people I had met there, even if I was there only 36 hours. I waited on the path in the garden, sitting on a step in the morning sun, surrounded by flowers, taking in the peace.

Tags: 1. Australasia, 1A. New Zealand, 1A2. South Island, New Zealand, Photos

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