I think I made up for 3 months of busyness/laziness/physical inactivity once we set foot on the South Island. It all started with a kayak/hike trip. One minute we were sitting on the ferry and the next thing we knew, Erin and I were sitting in a kayak, geared up and making our way up the coast of Abel Tasman National Park. The sun was blazing hot and the water was cold. Cruising past awesome blue/green bays, rocky cliffs, and sandy beaches helped take our minds off the 6 hours/12 kms of rowing that we had to get through. Three months of doing little more than keep my balance and "hold on" on a sailboat was hardly the right prep for paddling so I was definitely thankful that the wind and wave gods were being nice to us that day. The moment we passed a little blue penguin floating in the water next to us, we knew that we were somewhere special.

The second part of the trip was a 12 km hike the next day further up the coast with a water taxi ride back to town. "One-way" physical exertion is such a great concept! We stayed in the national park that night on a floating hostel which was awesome - we were the only ones left in the lagoon when the sun went down and everyone else had gone. There was even a "field trip" that night - the woman at the hostel dinghied us out to the beach and we all crawled into a dark small cave together. I looked up and there were stars! Well, it was actually worm larvae. Gross, but such a spectacular sight - the walls of the cave were lit up like the night sky with tons of greenish-white lights. Really a neat thing to see. The excursion didn't end there though - the tide was right, so we had the opportunity to see another "cool thing." So off we went into another dark cave. We all crawled into a narrow/small cave, crowded together, crouched down low, and were expecting similar ooohs and aaahs. Then... the flashlight came on. We all shrieked. The walls were covered in HUGE LONG-LEGGED CRAWLING BUGS. Thousands of Wetas - massive, moving Cave Wetas - were inches from our heads. OK, maybe it wasn't thousands, but it might have well been! One guy who was already claustrophobic in there as it was nearly knocked himself out turning around so fast to get out. If you can get over the creepy crawliness of it all and the horror of one falling onto your head, they were cool to see as well. Honestly though, I would have been happy with just the worms.

The hike the next day was awesome. Our path dipped us in and out of trees and forests to blue lagoons and sandy beaches for 6 hours to our final destination and taxi pick-up spot, Onetahuti Beach. Great views and scenery all along the way, but it was a long way of up-and-down, up-and-down. I definitely had sore legs to match my sore arms when we finally arrived, but the view and the beach was a great reward for all the hard work it took to get there. Just the first of many rewarding final destinations...

Living the backpacker life again was a hoot, especially at age 32:
Opening the door to our dorm room to find two Austrian 22-year old men as your roommates; sharing a bottle of wine with them while watching Australian Idol.
Watching Lord of the Rings, again, in the TV room.
Sleeping in a bunkbed and walking to the bathroom with all your toiletries and clothes.
Trying to sleep in a room with 8 people in it - lights going on and off, people coming in and out, snoring, rustling. Plastic bags and zippers might as well have been lawn mowers or airplane engines for as much noise they make after the sun goes down. And of course, people always leave their packing until after everyone else has gone to bed, or until 5am just before their early departure. Rustle rustle, open close, open close, rustle rustle, repeat. I always wondered whether or not they noticed the numerous other sleeping bodies in the room with their eyes closed. Hello hostel etiquette!

I think it's been 15 years since Erin and I last stayed in a hostel so it all took a bit of getting used to again but it was just part of the adventure we were on. Backpacker hostels are a pretty neat phenomenon - a transient and social hub of people from all over the world who were coming from where we were headed or else going where we had just come from.

Because of the fairly tight time schedule we were on, neither rain nor shine could slow us down. Of course the rain had to pour on the one day we would be crawling around on top of an ice glacier for an entire day! Franz Josef glacier is the fourth longest glacier in the world and one of very few that is easily accessible to tourists. Given the huge number of tourists that go up every day, it was no wonder that the tour company was such a well-oiled machine for getting everyone up to the ice. Sign up, pay up, and then get geared up - hiking boots, cramponz, Goretex pants, Goretex jacket, socks, ice pick, hat, and gloves - all in a matter of 30 minutes. Given the amount of gear, I figured there must be some serious ice up there...

Requiring cramponz to walk should have been a big hint that getting up and down and through the huge blue and white ice field would be an adventure. We were amazed that they just send you up there with only a short lesson on how to walk with steel "cleats" on your boots and how to use an ice axe. Especially when you see ladders rigged across deep crevasses or are trying to climb/claw your way up a vertical wall of ice on "steps" that your guide just hacked out with his sharp axe. The rain poured down but that wouldn't matter, everything inside and out would all be wet eventually anyways. We felt (and probably looked) like little ants crawling on the surface of this enormous ice field. It was pretty challenging physically with all the up and down and around, while having to pay attention to each step you took. We must have been a funny sight - all trudging along, stamping down so hard with each step so we wouldn't slip and fall. It was wild to look down and see how much ground we'd covered and how far we'd come up the glacier. The whole experience was surreal, but the most surreal thing was when I found myself in a crevasse, wedged between two bright blue huge walls of ice, sliding myself along the icy walls through puddles of ice/water to get to the other side. Better yet was crawling on my hands and knees through a cave/tunnel surrounded by clear ice in every shade of blue - we were literally inside of a very large ice cube. After 6 hours "sightseeing" on the long ice obstacle course in the rain, I was happy when we were back on dry land and I could finally look up while walking.

The Milford Track is a 4-day hike covering 34 miles of terrain that is considered one of the greatest hikes in the world. This was the main event of our 2 weeks traveling together and next on the agenda. I was excited to see what exactly makes a hike one of the greatest in the world...

More coming soon.
Judy