around the world in 180 days

As our last days in NZ are slipping away, we’re busy trying to make the most out of the time we have left without driving ourselves crazy. We left Queenstown yesterday and drove north through the Crown Range and then Haast pass. We checked out some of the day hikes along the road, which traversed some incredible mountain scenery, but were left sort of unsatisfied. All of the hikes were short, like 30 mins or so, and most were crammed with people. They were alright and the scenery was incredible, but we both realized today that we’re looking for a hike that’s a bit more satisfying. We feel like we’re wasting our last days in NZ doing this touristy stuff. I guess this is one of the drawbacks to not planning ahead–some days the only things you stumble across aren’t what you really want to do.

We tried for a better hike today, settling on a 3 ½ hour hike to a seal colony, which would have been fantastic, had there been actual seals at said seal colony. I guess it was the wrong time of the year or day or something, but we saw one seal sitting out on a rock. They must be endangered. The walk itself was ok. We went through a dense rainforest-y area that was pretty cool, but we wore sandals instead of boots, which was a mistake. The trail was rocky and pretty muddy but oh well. We survived. We just got dirty feet.

Tomorrow will be better though. We’re spending tonight in a small, touristy town on the west coast called Hokitika and tomorrow we’re driving north to the pancake rocks area (Punikake), to do a river hike, as long as it isn’t raining. The hike is supposed to be beautiful. After that, we’re going to backtrack back down the coast a bit and head inland to Arthur’s Pass (which I keep calling Albert’s Pass for some reason) and on Friday we’re going to climb Avalanche Peak, again as long as the weather is good. Saturday we leave, flying to SYD to start a new section of our trip.

Last night we met some more Americans. Now that we’re getting ready to leave, they’re coming out of the woodwork. These two were retired gentlemen who were biking their way around NZ. They were from southern Illinois, but had spent a lot of time on the north shore and in the BWCA, so we talked a lot of MN, of fishing and of all the things we should check out next time we come to NZ. They were interesting and I enjoyed talking with them.

The other bit of news recently that some of you already know is that Anna got into St. Kate’s, so we’ll definitely be moving to the cities when we come back. This, along with our leaving NZ, has got us both thinking about what things will be like when we get back. Anna will have a lot of things to try to figure out from overseas and I think it’ll be stressful for her at times. I hope that I can help, and I hope that everything works out. I suppose it will—it always does.

Tags: Americans, hiking, New Zealand, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 12:26 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.