The Heaphy Track

the heaphy track was the most succesfull and fun of all of my hikes. although it did not have the views of the milford track or the rob roy and it was long [82 kms vs. the 58 of the milford track over four days] it was the pleasant one of them all.

i was prepared for pain and suffering [i had a 27km days just a couple of days before the heaphy track], blisters, sandflies and boring scenery. instead i had lovely weather, clear sky and no sandflies for the first three days.

day i

i had to wake up at 5am to catch a Southern Link crappy shuttle to the track head. after changing three shuttles, freezing my ass of and not being able to sleep i reached the trailhead at ten o’clock. i was worried – i had 25kms to go. 17 uphill. and only 8 hours before dark. i was surprised by the gradual slope of the track. i met some people going the other way and they confirmed that the track does not get any steeper all the way to the top. i was relieved to hear that, and with a little less haste i continued walking. on the way i met the people who caused me to walk 25kms to a stove-less hut – turns out a big group of kiwi families booked up the entire first hut a year in advance. their hut was nice and warm. the couple of wardens who live there keep the fire going 24/7. i had to walk another 8kms to the next hut, leaving the boring bush behind me and ascending into open downs [where you can spot the hut from a distance :”) ] . as i reached the hut i was in for a disappointment – no fire! no warmth! we only had one room with cooking bench, the sitting benches, eight bunks a fire place. i strategically chose the bunk opposite the fire place and prepared dinner. the rules of hiking are – breakfast is when you get out of your sleeping bag, lunch is two hours after you start walking and dinner is when you get to the hut [my dietician would support the dinner timing – the sooner you eat, the quicker your body recovers.]

the only other tourist on the track was a japanese guy. other than the two of us it was pure kiwis. a father who took his three daughters to the track. the poor kids had to walk 25kms.

as night set and it became cold, i realized why they say that the gouland flats hut is a jut with lots of atmosphere. half of the smoke from the fireplace was going into the hut. i woke up around midnight, choking on the smoke and asked the japanese guy who was tending the fire to open the door. a couple of hours later i woke up again, soaked in sweat. and in the morning everything i brought with me, especially my bag and sleeping bag, had a “nice” smoky aroma which holds on up till now.

day ii

after breakfast an “easy” day on 19kms followed. i walked along flats, open downs and shoe trees to the next hut. there were two wobbly wire bridges, they type they make out of garden wire fence. there was some australia like landscape. and since the internet costs money but word does not i cannot go back to my pictures and remember what else happened on the second day of the walk. it was almost a month ago. i just remember the open downs and flats, walking along the bush on gravel trail and reaching a hut full of two hyper active sugar loaded kids. lucky for them, some guy was snoring during the night and i had to use my earplugs, otherwise the mayhem they did the next morning would tempt me to roast one of them for breakfast.

so, basically, not a lot of peace and quite the second day. i again met the weird habit of kiwis to jump into the coldest water they can find for a “swim” or a “dip”, when they’re perfectly nice and dry.

the hut warden in the hut was an ex social worker and she spent some time with us. i made a few remarks about the lack of washing machine and speculated that they do not wash their clothes too often. the hut warden responded that she, unlike some other people *ahem*, had her shower that day. i chose to remain stinky, but dry and warm.

day iii

you could see the location of my third hut, the heaphy hut, [there are lots of huts and a few of possibilities to hike the heaphy] from the second hut. it looked far away. i did not believe i was acvtually going to walk all the way to the west coast. but i had my hut pass, my blisters were doing pretty well, and a 21km pursued, with a stopover at Lewis Hut to watch crazy kiwis ford a river with their kid when a perfectly good bridge is no more than two minutes away. wet boots and wet feet are a hiking nightmare, and bare feet also mean sandfly bait, and we got to meet lots of sandflies in the hut. the secret of the sandflies is that as long as you’re moving [in theory] they don’t bite [although the amount of bites i have on my legs might indicate otherwise]. they go to bed when it gets dark. and you’re ok if you cover up.

well, i covered up real well when i got to the hut for the night. on the way i walked under some rainforesty cliffs, by river deltas, crossed a couple of big and safer [note the safer. i do not believe they’re safe] swing bridges and reached a hut standing on a patch of green grass. one hundred meters from the hut was a sandy beach and a lagoon which was salty on high tide and fresh on low tide. a really nice place for a hut.

the initial cover up did not work. they can bite you through the poly-something thermals they make here. you have to deet yourself first, then put of your thermals. i hate deet. after the first 6 or 7 bites i just stayed inside. and much fun it was – the hyperactive kids went the other way, but some nice kiwi families were hiking the same hike and the day was spent away chatting.

i could not get to sleep that night. i was starving. as usual, i did not carry enough bread and i was reading LOTR. merry and pippin were escaping from the orcs and eating their lambas. i had a snickers bar. it was the best snickers bar i had in my life, but it was tomorrow’s ration. i knew the last day will be tough.

day iv – or how i discovered modern day lambas

well, hazy with hunger i got some breakfast down. not even a couple of hours into my hike for the day i ate my lunch. i was out of chocolate, trail mix, chocolate bars, tortillas, cheese. i only had my stove, pasta and another 10kms to walk before the shuttle pick up point.

the last days had quite a lot of uphill and downhill. not very steep, but unexpected. and 16kms are a lot of walking after walking 66kms in 3 days. nonetheless, i managed to enjoy the last day. i did feel triumph when i reached the parking lot and the heaphy track sign – 135km of walking in eight days were quite an achievement for me. i then proceeded to start cooking the pasta. the kiwi family offered me a One Square Meal. they are basically two heavy duty granola bars, with no sugar, some protein powder and three of these a day, in theory, supply all of your nutrition. well, OSM only come in apricot flavour. but after three and a half days of being hungry i was ready to eat anything while waiting for my 20-minutes-pasta to cook.

i think that you need to starve for three and a half days [ok, not starve. be peckish] to like OSM. but once it’s in your system you’re theirs forever. OSM are now integral part of my hiking diet [can you really call something which is 25% chocolate a diet?]. you can live on them, they keep you going, help your spirits and they keep you fed. just like lambas [maybe, just maybe, i should not have picked up the Fellowship of the Ring in that book exchange. on the other hand, i’m not going to join the Tolkien community when i come back. some hazy talk has done no one no harm]. and $12 a day for food is cheap. i wonder if i could really just live on them.

a shuttle showed out of the horizon and took us to another expensive resort to reach tourists. i got a towel and shampoo, had a shower and re-wore my stinky tramping gear and felt sorry for myself. i was all alone in the backpackers’ section, another cold and draughty room and i was not very clean. i had to sleep in my stinky sleeping bag. i went to the bar, where it was nice and warm, and the kiwi family invited me over to dinner. the cook put beets in my burger. beets?? what the hell? that’s even weirder than fresh cucumbers. the beets had to go. i entertained them with stories, got a free meal and a good night’s sleep before spending about nine hours on different Southern Link busses the next day.

nothing good can happen on a day you spend nine hours on busses, and this one was no exception. you could it was even worse than usual. it was about 2pm, the second bus for the day, after i got on the first one at 7:45 in the morning. there were about seven of us on a thrifty Southern Link bus. the bus was only, falling apart and extremely uncomfortable. it was the second time i was driving to nelson via the buller gorge and it was not as exciting as the first time. we had a lunch stop in some beat down cafe in a beat up town just outside the gorge. i looked at my watch, figured out i had enough time and went to the toilets. i got out of the toilets, looked at the watch, realized it was very late [no, i did not spend that much in the toilets. my brain was not working the first time i looked at the watch] and no one else was around. i ran outside. there was no bus. my backpack was somewhere on the way to nelson. i ran back inside. no one was there. i ran outside again and made sure the bus was not hiding anywhere. nope. it was gone. some people were pulling out of the parking lot, but they were going the other way.

well.

the cafe ladies called the bus company who radioed the bus driver to come back and get me. she was not surprised she had left me behind at all. there were only seven of us on the bus. i think she could count very well. after waiting for nerve wrecking 15 minutes the bus pulled over. “you were late”, she said. “everyone else got back here on time”. i mumbled i was sorry. i sat at the back of the bus [some asshole took over my seat] and was very very quite for half an hour.

she knew she left me behind. she wanted to teach me a lesson. i thought that after a month and a half of being on time for busses she could give me a break. she wasted half an hour for eight people and had to do extra driving. but i got a good story out of it.

i’m approaching the end of the south island travels back logging – only the abel tasman left to write about. i have a tale of bravery and selflessness to tell before i can unfold my north island travels [in short, i got on a 14 seats place the size of a minivan to fly from wellington to taupo] which so far encompass taupo, tongariro AKA mt doom, rotorua and my free trip to the bay of islands. it’s 1 am, way past my bed time [10pm on a good day, i’m on hiking sleep cycles] and i just wrote three and a half pages on the heaphy track, which contain a lot of LOTR musings. and i did not even watch the movies.

Queen Charlotte Track

an old lady was shouting at me to shut up cause she could not talk to two people at once. i merely wanted her to ask the lady on the phone if they connect with the bus back from the track. that was the start of the best two weeks of my trip so far.

after some more shouting, a few nasty looks and mumbles about israelis and generally pushing my nerves to the limit – my ferry was about to leave in en minutes – i had all of my track transport booked and i legged it to the boat to the q. charlotte track.

there was not much to tell about the track itself. although it is labelled as an easy walk track it was extremely steep at times. when you got off the boat you just walked straight uphill. it was a deceiving track – things look really close, just on the other side of the water, 300 meters away, until you look around the edge of the bluff and realize the inlet is about 5kms long.

i stayed the first night in the backpackers’ section of an expensive resort. i only did it twice during my trip and it was a pretty bad experience. this one was an awful one – it was just me and a dutch guy staying in an old farm house [a croft]. it was cold and windy. hot showers were extra. everyone else had nice rooms which looked nice and warm. we had crappy bunk beds and we were cold and drafty. i did have a great cup of hot cocoa at the bar [a luxury in the middle of a hike] but i would love to have a DOC hut instead.

the next day’s morning started bad. i hoped those rich resort people would help me change my bookings for the track. they just pointed a finger at the payphone and told me to pay $2 for 10 minutes of internet just to get a hostel number back in nelson. i spend a hour on the phone moving around my booking – cutting a day and 20kms off the charlotte track – to have a rest day between it and the heaphy.

after that bad start the tramp was lovely and uneventful until i reached the place for the night. it was half an hour off the track [ i thought it was half a hour i would not have to walk the next day, not extra walking] a small homestead at some really old lady’s house. for some reason or other she hated me. i was blamed for messing up the compost and the rubbish bins and leaving the kitchen in a mess [i forgot to wash one pot]. another guy who was staying there for the night caught up with me the next day and told me she complained about me, and loudly, the next morning.

the last day was a big one – 25kms of walking, plus extra half an hour, plus another couple of kms to get some ice cream before taking the boat back to picton. i spend in the company of said guy. ice cream was consumed and i slept on the ferry back to picton. i then had an encounter with the worst transport company in the south island – Southern Link K Bus. it took us 3.5 hours to get back to nelson, a trip which lasts less than two hours on an intercity coach.

Picton

picton was a stopover on the way to the Queen Charlotte track. i was drunk most of the time i spent in picton – for some reason i only understood there is nothing to do in the towns in new zealand after leaving the south island. as soon as i got to picton i realized that A. there’s nothing here B. i want to go on the heaphy track and C. i don’t have a bag liner and my bag is going to spend a lot of time thrown on a wharf somewhere along the track.

i had a couple of hours to book the heaphy track in an internet cafe, book the transport to and fro the heaphy track [400 kms of driving, three different bus companies and four busses] and look for a bag liner before going on a wine tour. these were probably the busiest hours of my time in zealand. luckily i had a nice woman in the i site to help me, unlike the nasty worker they had in the DOC office. but time was running short and we did not complete booking all of the busses. i thought i could use intercity, so we booked the rest of the transport. i was then picked up for the wine tour.

you probably do not want to drive yourself on a wine tour. we met some people touring on bikes and their ride was pretty wobbly. there was a weird american couple, two older couples and another lady in her thirties. they were a lovely bunch. half of them spend the morning drinking wine, a pretty good head start. nonetheless, being small and compact my drunkenness levels caught up with theirs pretty fast. we went to four wineries, had about a glass to a glass and a half of wine in each. i got a really nice bottle of ice wine [drunk it on my own on the Charlote track] and pretended i was drinking elf draughts. [i was reading LOTR at the time. i read them all by now, and i'm reading the third one for the second time, for lack of better reading material. i am planinng to get a pipe and some tobbaco and smoke a pipe on one my next tramps. i already feel like a hobbit when i'm tramping anyway - heavy rucksack, usually not enough food and lotsa mountains to climb, not to mention i did go to mt doom]

by the time we got back i called intercity and found out i had no transport, no liner, no hostel after the heaphy track and i had a boat out to the charlotte track at 9am the next morning. oh, and i was supposed to go to the heaphy track the morning after i got back from the heaphy.

Nelson

i got to nelson pretty late, after a tough bus ride. i was pretty worried about that bus ride, but Intercity knows where they get their money from and the bus did a stopover in Punakiki, where there are famous pancake rocks. the rocks are not exciting but the rest of the west coast is. [after travelling on the north island for a week and a half i can definitely say that the companies and the DOC know where the money is coming from. you do not see that kind of stuff on the south island].

the hostel owner picked me up from the bus and brought me to the best hostel that i’ve stayed in. the hostel is fifteen minutes out of town, the kitchen was a bit too small and crowded and three showers for 20-something people is not enough, but everything was clean. the highlight, though, were two new computers with internet access, burners and memory card readers. they were free. they were always on. they are the reason i have so many photos in my flickr account. i really liked those two computers.

on my first day i met an american jewish girl. i got to hear her family history, which took quite a while. stuff you only hear about in talk shows. she had a really weird backpack [the second weirdest i’ve seen so far. the first is those weird Osprey or something backpacks. they have firm plastic backs, weird hoods, pockets all over the place. they’re transformers as well and can change their shape. you can use them to carry heavy loads comfortably. apparently they weigh about 3kgs, twice as much as the average bag. if they were lighter, you might not need such a heavy suspension system :”)] [i’m not into backpacks that much, but these are some really _weird_ packs] we took bikes from the hostel [after spending ca. 2 hours in the i site trying to book stuff] and went to the beach. the beach was far away. we were almost run over a few times and i felt like one of those game deer they have here each time we had to cross the road. by the time we got back from the beach the bottom of my back end was in a lot of pain. it turns out crocs are not ideal biking shoes, too. there was quite a lot of beach and not a lot of water – you can wade out for 70-80 meters and only be waist deep in water. the sand was more pleasant than the sand we have back home.

then, suddenly, Guy showed up. Guy is a israeli guy i keep running into in here. i met him for the first time in Wanaka. he showed up again in Franz Josef. he made another appearance in Nelson. later, we met on the Tongariro Northern Circuit and in Taupo. we went grocery shopping and i got to enjoy once again the pleasure of the New World [supermarket chain] self checkout. it was quite a lot of fun the first couple of times, then it grew old and annoying. someone else made an appearance that night as well – Nati. Nati is another israeli who took an interest in me, a single female traveller in a country full of israeli herds [everyone complains/ comment here that israelis travel in large groups. i only met another single israeli female and i heard about the legendary Dafna Gur. that makes about three of us] back in Franz Josef. [and just yesterday i ran into his trail up in the Bay of Islands]. he worked in africa for the UN. an intresting guy. he made some sushi which i refued to try.

the next day i got on my last intercity ride for a while and went up to picton.

Arthur’s Pass

I got to Arthur’s pass after way too much time on the bus. I had to take a bus out of Franz Josef glacier and get an Atomic Shuttle from Greymouth to the Pass. Greymouth is a grey city at the mouth of the Grey river. It was nice and sunny. I entered a bookstore hoping to find a guide book. Instead I found the Croc saver from the Copland valley track. They said the weather is going to be awful. with normal yeara confidence I got on my bus and went to Arthur’s pass. i rained when i got there and it continued raining when i hung my laundry under the balcony. it also rained when i realized that there are gaps between the balcony boards and my laundry is getting wet. arthur’s pass did not have any people living in it – it has a population of 50 people and maybe 500 keas [space... err... mountain parrots. nasty little things. they eat the wipers off your car and rip your tent apart to pieces. not my tent, though – i don’t have one]. that was one of cosiest hostel i stayed at, other than the expensive internet rate [and sucky computer] and the lack of TV [you really need one of these sometimes, to turn off your brain, especially when it’s raining and you’re in a 50 people village]

the next day i woke up. the sun was shining [through a thick layer of clouds], it did not rain and there was no need. i walked up the path to Avalanche peak. you walk a kilometre up over 2 kilometres. you climb. it was not a great walk. after getting out of the bush line and walking over a few ridges it was clear i should not bothered – although i could see all the way to the sea down the valley, the important bits [the glaciers around Avalanche peak] were covered with fog and clouds. the peak itself was covered too. at this point, the german guy i met on the way up and i made a tactical decision to turn around rather than stick and wait for one of those 60kph wind bursts to get us.

i don’t remember what i did the rest of my time in arthur’s pass. not much would sum it up pretty well. i met an Israeli guy who was travelling around the south island on bikes. i met a couple of guys which i first met in Milford sound, then in queenstown and later in franz josef. i got a couple of german girls a ride to greymouth with the german guy. i slept a lot, and ate leftovers from the hikes – they do not have a supermarket in a 50 people town.