South Island Part V: Te Anau Stories and Visuals
NEWS: I am back in New York City. I have bought my tickets to Paris and back from Stockholm, so I’m definitely going to be in Europe from May 11 till August 29! But where? I don’t yet know.
So I left off saying that I had plans for dinner… Two of the divers I had met on the dive boat in Milford Sound, happened to be from Portland, Oregon, and as Americans often are, happened to be welcoming people. The van ride back to Te Anau from Milford Sound included numerous stops in the mountains for purposes both educational and decompressing. Passing too quickly from the extreme pressure 16m below the surface of the ocean through several thousand meters of elevation and back again could be disastrous to the human heart. So we made stops at the river to fill our water bottles and see some ruins of the facilities for the families of the highway workers who built the tunnel allowing passage to the Sound. We stopped at a lookout where Dave informed us of the near extinct Kakapo, a large flightless parrot. Male Kakapo blaze a trail up a mountain, perch themselves at the top, and periodically bellow out a whomp sound that can be heard for miles. Any females in range and in the mood only have to follow their trails up the mountain and… you know the rest.
In Te Anau, we stopped at the Tawaki Dive shop where I had the pleasure of petting dogs for the first time in about three months, and of dishing over $20 for the ride. After we had all said goodbye to the Irish couple, Dave went on into town to drop us off at our lodgings, with one of the pooches, a pointer, tagging along for the ride. Upon finding out I was traveling alone, the American couple, whose names I have completely forgotten, and the woman’s mother told me to meet them at their room at 7:30 and we’d head out for some dinner. I couldn’t object to that. After being in New Zealand for four months with minimal contact with Americans and sometimes too much contact with people who reminded me regularly of the inferiority of Americans, I was glad for the company.
We found a restaurant that had been recommended to us, Recliff Cafe. I splurged, going full out on a $30 New Zealand venison meal with pumpkin gnocchi, and $5 on a dessert to follow. It wasn’t the most wonderfully tantalizing food I’ve had in my entire life, but it was well worth it. During our long conversation we discovered that they had seen me jump off Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown without ever knowing me, and now, we were sitting together in a restaurant having met through entirely different circumstances. New Zealand is a small country, and Earth seems to be an even smaller world.
A couple hours after we sat down, we finally left, letting the other diners have their peace and quiet. It was great to be loud again, without being the loudest person in the room; great to hear and make a bit of noise.
In the street we saw a mother possum scamper across with her baby on her back. Possums in New Zealand are much cuter than possums in North America, but they are a nuisance. Having been introduced into New Zealand from Australia, they have taken a toll on the local environment, and few New Zealanders would be unhappy to hear a possum had become road kill. With this sentiment, we made plans to go for a hike the following morning. I would meet them at 9:30, and we’d decide where to go and how far from there.
In the meantime, I headed back to my hostel to check out the movie room. The Last Samuri was halfway through. I had only recently found out, having been informed by a Kiwi, that The Last Samurai was filmed in New Zealand, in the Taranaki region. Sure enough, I began to recognize the characteristic sheep trails zigzagging up and down the hillsides. The last Samurai definitely fought their epic battle in a New Zealand sheep paddock.
In following with the New Zealand filmed movie theme, another backpacker popped in the third Lord of the Rings movie. He did so at my request, well, more like he waited to do so until I got back from dinner at my request. But I don’t know what I was thinking, because, and don’t be insulted by this, I am one of the few people I know who have always found Lord of the Rings type fantasies to be utterly ridiculous. Let’s just say that if it weren’t for the fact that the seats in the movie room were so terribly uncomfortable, I would have been laughing my head off throughout the entire movie. I enjoyed myself, nonetheless, at least up until the last half hour of the movie, when they say all their painfully long goodbyes. For some odd reason I was surprised when I realized three hours had passed. I yawned my way to bed, and fell quickly to sleep.
The next morning I fixed the last peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I would ever be able to force down my throat again. PBJs and I have an interesting relationship. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a PBJ is a very American delicasse, in which one slice of sandwich bread is slathered with peanut butter and another with jelly (or jam if you don’t understand American), and the two are stuck together. So back to the relationship… I never eat PBJ when I’m at home, and will even go so far as to avoid it. Strangely, however, every time I leave the US I get a hankering for PBJ, and I eat it like a PMSing teenager eats chocolate or a fish drinks water.
I had a short conversation with my German bunkmate who stared into my eyes in that I’m-in-love-with-you sort of way, which I found a bit unnerving considering I had just met him. I left quickly to prevent any unnecessary heartache on the part of the German, and with the goal in mind of grabbing some Tim Tams to take home to my sweet-tooth grandfather. Tim Tams are, let me quote the package, “the most irresistible chocolate biscuit,” and then let me add, “in the world!” For those of you who don’t speak British, let me translate: “the most irresistible chocolate cookie in the world.” Trying them is an absolute must for anyone visiting Australia or New Zealand, but be warned, they are an absolute surefire addiction waiting to happen.
So anyway, after some wandering I found a grocery store and went to meet the Americans for our hike. We decided on walking part of the Kepler Track, another of New Zealand’s Great Walks. The woman’s mother, whom I’d like to say I liked very much, because she reminded me of someone I know and respect very much, warned me that the two of them were like billy goats. For this reason she would actually not be coming with us but would rather either try and hitch a ride on some nice eligible man’s sailboat or take an easier walk at a slower pace. So just three of us headed in the direction of the Lake Te Anau Control Gates where the track starts. The walk around the lake to the entrance was an estimated 1 hour, but we made it in 45 minutes. Sure enough, walking with these two was going to be a real workout, no more lazy pace for me.
About halfway around the lake, we found ourselves distracted by a bird sanctuary containing a number of birds none of us had ever before seen, and a few that we had. One unmannered family of ducks had discovered the unhygienic joys of mud baths and not-so-chocolaty mudslides. The overworked mother agitatedly flicked gulps of mud into her beak and down her throat while her out-of-control ducklings splashed each other and themselves with her drink.
We continued on around, wondering to ourselves if New Zealand had any native animals that did not have wings. It had seemed to us that every animal we had seen or heard of on the islands that was not a bird, had been introduced. The deer, the possum, not even the rat were native. Each one had been introduced by some or other human coming from some or other foreign place. Not to discredit New Zealand’s abundant biodiversity, but are birdlife and marine life the only animal lives New Zealand can boast?
Our thoughts brought us around to the Control Gates, which are just that, gates constructed where Lake Te Anau drains with the function of controlling drainage, or at least that’s what I could gather. A bridge carries trampers across the gates and only a little farther down the path, to the entrance of the Kepler Track marked by a signpost with a map and some basic information.
At the signpost, we took the right fork. The track starts off relatively flat, passing through forests with low ferns, and great carpets of moss, following near to and nearly level to the lake’s shoreline. It is a shady walk, requiring no sun protection, and that day the weather was perfectly balanced with our physical exertion to make us comfortable in T-shirts.
We fairly quickly discovered, however, that “flat” was a far from perfect to use to describe the Kepler Track. The trail soon began to slope upward without relief, and the incline soon became so great that zigzagging became a necessity if you didn’t want to be scrambling hands-and-knees-and boot toes up the mountain. So the path carried us back and forth up the mountain as the trees grew steadily shorter. The man, whose name I still can’t remember, kept announcing that he could see the top; he could see light breaking through the trees. But each time we had come almost to that top he’d seen, we found yet another top above it. I found my boots which had served me so well when I walked part of the flat Able Tasman Track were now failing in the test of uphill climbing as my feet were jammed against the back heel, rubbing their way toward a blister. Luckily, the effects of altitude and endorphins rendered the pain relatively trivial. I had to admit, I was looking forward to the walk down.
We had a goal to achieve, according to the two-dimensional map there were limestone bluffs not far from the first hut along the trail, and the first hut was supposed to be about a three or four hour hike in. We were determined to see those bluffs, and to make them our turning back point. When we finally made it over a ridge, and the trail temporarily leveled out alongside a large light-colored concave cliff face, we figured it had to be them. They were simply too striking to be nothing and it seemed reasonable enough that limestone bluffs would be large and light-colored. It had been almost four hours since we’d left our lodging.
We continued on around to see if anything lay above them. Seeing no easy access to the bluff’s edge, we found suitable stumps to rest on and had our lunch. They were kind enough to share a couple Tim Tams with me.
Limestone Bluffs
Fairly large beetle
It didn’t take long for our bodies to cool down or for a few sand flies to find us. I put my sweatshirt back on to keep my back from freezing where sweat had collected and we continued back down the mountain.
View from bluffs
As happy as I was to be walking downhill, we still had a long way to go, and my boots were no more comfortable on the downhill than they were on the up. Now, instead of my heels being jammed, my toes were, and my joints, unprotected by exhausted muscles, were taking a pounding. But having my breath back as we crept slowly down in elevation, feeling the air grow steadily warmer, and feeling my ears pop when we were about halfway down the mountain, I felt alright. On the way back down, they told me about the interesting things they had learned about SCUBA diving. They told me about how many of the earliest divers, the ones that paved the way for today’s divers suffered high mortality rates as they experimented with a variety of air concoctions. How do we know about the Bends? The hard way. How do we know that an air tank cannot be filled with 100% oxygen? The hard way. Many of the earliest explorers of the sea never returned to the surface. But today much more is understood, and diving is safe if done with the right precautions. Still, diving is in infancy stages, as is understanding of the marine-life most divers are there to see. That’s the beauty of it. The beauty of the dive is the beauty of the ocean, and for some people, that far outweighs the risks.
View of Te Anau from trail.
Kea below the treeline
By the time we reached flat ground again, it was too late to make any difference. My feet were swollen to two sizes their normal size, or at least that’s how they felt to me. I hadn’t remembered the walk being so long around the shoreline, and it seemed like ages before we were back at our respective rooms.
When I arrived, I collapsed on my bed, kicked off my shoes, and opened a box of Tim Tams I had promised myself I wouldn’t open. The German with the I’m-in-love-with-you look strolled in and asked me how my walk was. I told him it was great, that I needed a shower, but I couldn’t walk yet, so I definitely couldn’t stand in a shower yet. I made an attempt to get up, but quickly found my way back to the bed, and its relief. I lay there a while longer before I finally rose, kicked the gravel out of my pant-cuffs, and limped into the bathroom.
A few hours later, my feet had reached a Zen state of bearable pain, so with freshly cleaned hair, I headed in the direction of the movie theatre, passing on my way a number of funny characters dressed entirely in pink, with wings strapped to their backs and little plastic buckets in their hands. I wracked my brain for a quick explanation. Trick-or-treaters, of course! I, an American, had forgotten all about my favorite pagan holiday, Halloween!
Spotting only four trick-or-treaters, all dressed as fairies, I continued through a park to where the theatre sat on a side street. This theatre was built for the purpose of showing one film, a 32 minute, cinematic beauty of the Fiordland. Shown in a theatre of clean and classy design, without words, with a score incredibly placed, and footage of some of the most awe-inspiring wilderness on our planet, Ata Whenua Shadowland is incredible for its moving beauty. From snow-capped peaks to ocean scarred rocks to iridescent hummingbirds, this film was simply as beautiful as the Fiordland, and gave me a peak at what I and most of the human race have never seen. I couldn’t help buying a copy.
As the film let out, I had the chance to run into the American couple and their mother one last time. They seemed to have enjoyed it as well, and their feet were still pretty sore, though they didn’t complain. The woman’s mother said, “see, I told you they were billy goats.”
We left the theatre, and they told me if I’m ever in Portland to look them up. Too bad I am the number one worst person at ever staying in touch.
Tags: 1. Australasia, 1A. New Zealand, 1A2. South Island, Photos, Te Anau, tramping
Drea
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