Days 40-46: Tanjung Benoa, Bali

Sorry for the long delay in posting, we’ve been relaxing completely! We’re in Bali now, at the four star Aston Bali Resort ($55/night, thanks to wotif.com!), enjoying the beautiful beach, warm sun, and nothing to do! The last month has been fairly tiring (but wonderful) and we have a lot of recuperating to do. I’ve been playing a bit of volleyball, and we went jet-skiing, but other than that it’s mostly been sleeping, laying on the beach, swimming, and reading! It’s a rough life, but someone’s got to do it.

Bali is truly beautiful, and the people are tremendously friendly. We’re only 8 degrees south of the equator, so it’s predictably hot and humid, but not terribly so – temperature is around 28 degrees Celsius most days, and probably 70% humidity, but between swimming in the ocean and pool (both probably 24 degrees, a nice bath water!) and the breeze coming in off the ocean, it’s fine being outside.

We'll have to more to report about Bali later, after we do some more exploring, but for now the beach is calling.

Days 37-39: Christchurch

We’ve spent our last few days in New Zealand dealing with logistics, relaxing, and exploring Christchurch. It’s been raining outside most of the time, so we’ve watched a bunch of movies (on demand movies are great!), used the free internet access, and eaten take-away from the near-by Thai and Chinese places. The great www.wotif.com has allowed us to stay at a nice hotel for less than the price of a hostel!

We took advantage of our one afternoon without rain to walk around Christchurch a bit, walking along the River Avon, which circles downtown, and strolling through the beautiful botanical gardens. We also watched some performers at the World Buskers Festival, going on for the second half of January. It’s a very nice city, probably our favorite in New Zealand. It has a very English feel to it, between the architecture, people, and all the rain. It also reminded us a bit of Boston, since the downtown area is quite small, very walkable, and closes early in the evening.

We also spent a lot of time in the great used bookstores here, swapping out all those we’ve finished for new (to us) ones. The book situation is difficult – you can’t carry enough with you to last terribly long, but new books are expensive (in New Zealand they seem to be about twice the price as at home), and used book stores are never frequent enough. Hostels sometimes have book swaps, which are great, but then the selection is pretty bad. Library book sales have been great, since they always have really good prices, but they’re pretty rare. Hunter gave us several books when he left, which have been great, keeping us going through a really dry spell!

Days 35-36: Mt Cook

More driving today. We went all the way back up to Mount Cook, but this time on the interior side of mountain range, probably only 40 kilometers from Fox Glacier. Other than helicopter, there aren’t any shortcuts from one side of the range to the other though – you have to drive at least 400 kilometers to get from one side to the other, due to the paucity of drivable passes through the mountains.

Part of the drive was backtracking (the first we’ve done in NZ) to Queenstown, but the remainder was new. We passed by High Country Salmon and bought a pound and a half of fresh salmon for $8! Boy did that grill up nicely! We hiked down to the beautiful turquoise waters of Lake Pukaki and went for a swim. Apparently the color is caused by minerals in the sediment, leftovers from the glaciers that carved it out. Mount Cook provides an amazing backdrop, with it snow gleaming and glaciers beckoning.

The next day we went up to the Tasman Glacier, hiked (and swam) around the Blue Lakes (which really should be called the Green Ponds), then down to Tasman Lake, which is filled with icebergs calved from the glacier, and through the moraine. Tasman Glacier is much flatter than even Fox Glacier, but even bigger. A very large portion of it is covered in dirt and rock, making it less impressive, but apparently the ice is 200 meters deep! It was quite warm despite the altitude, and nearly desert level dryness in the valley, much to our surprise. The views up to Mount Cook and the surrounding peaks were pretty amazing, it’d be fun to do some real climbing in the area.

Days 33-34: Te Anau

Today we drove down to Te Anau, passing into yet another temperate zone of New Zealand, with much drier conditions. We’re in an interior valley, and all the rain is blocked by the high mountain ranges on either side. We’re finally starting to see the true prevalence of sheep – the drier, steeper conditions mean that we’re seeing thousands and thousands of sheep, but very few cows. All of the travel has caught up with us a bit and we’re feeling under the weather, so we’re taking this afternoon and tomorrow off to recover. That sadly means we won’t be going down to Milford Sound like we’d planned, but it’s obviously more important to rest up and feel better. We did manage to swim in Lake Te Anau though, jumping off a 5 meter high pier down into the frigid waters.

Days 31-32: Queenstown

We were treated this morning with mostly clear skies and a view up to the peak of Mount Cook. We’ve been tremendously lucky with the weather thus far on the trip (knock on wood!), and yesterday was the most rain we’ve had. Apparently rain like yesterday is pretty common for the west coast, so we’ll be happy for all the sun we get!

We continued driving south along the Tasman Sea, stopping a few times for brief hikes and explorations, including a fun hike near Ship Creek that included sand dunes, swamps, rain forest, and near desert conditions, all within a few miles of each other. We cut inland along the Haast River, a broad valley with high mountains on either side. We hiked out to the Blue Pools, which I thought were really more green than blue, but were still beautiful. Yes, we have been using that word a lot (and WOW! a lot as we drive), but it’s true every time.

We stopped again at Lake Wanaka, much to the relief of a German man who’d decided to take his car all the way down to the lakefront and then (unsurprisingly) managed to get it stuck in the sand. Using the mats from our car and a lot of pushing, we got him free, and then continued on to Lake Hawea, where Mary decided to go for a swim in the 10 degree Celsius waters! (It was cold, dammit! – Mary) These are pretty huge lakes, measuring maybe 80 kilometers long, although only one across, clearly carved out by glaciers long ago.

Queenstown reminds me a bit of Geneva (but a lot smaller). It’s a relatively small town situated on a lake, nested against the mountains, with the beautiful backdrop of The Remarkables mountain range across the water. The town is pretty cute, although every third shop is an “information” desk, providing bookings for all of the adventures sports that go on just outside of town (parachuting, bungy jumping, jetboating, mountain biking, whitewater rafting, and dozens of others). We spent the next day relaxing, wandering around town, and enjoying some more beautiful weather with an incredible sunset over the lake.

Day 30: Fox Glacier

Lucinda was rather surprised at our request for a 10am breakfast, but we loved the late morning and felt quite refreshed. We went for a quick hike down to Lake Matheson, which is featured in thousands of photos, with Mount Cook looming in the background (frequently reflected in the calm lake). It was drizzling most of the morning, so no views of the mountains for us, but it was still beautiful.

We joined an afternoon trek up onto Fox Glacier, since you need to be with a guide to go onto the glaciers, and they provide the crampons and other gear you need. It’s an hour and a half hike through the glacier valley each way, then an hour on the glacier itself. The valley is pretty remarkable, since you’re hiking in rain forest with only a shirt and shorts, while you can see the glacier next to you, less than 100 meters away. It’s one of only 2 places in the world with this combination, the other being Patagonia. The top of the glacier gets 40 meters (yes, 120 feet) of snow a year on average, which compacts down to about 10 feet of glacial ice.

Once you get out onto the ice, you definitely need a jacket and maybe long pants and another layer or two. Between the steps the guides carve out for you, the crampons, and the hiking sticks they provide (with metal spikes), it’s pretty easy to walk on the glacier, but I wouldn’t do it without a guide, given the deep crevasses and changing ice conditions throughout the day. The combination of the deep blue of the glacial ice, the clear ice that has begun to thaw, the white ice full of air bubbles, and the gray of rock fragments from landslides onto the glacier, it’s much more colorful on the glacier than you’d expect.

It started to rain as we climbed down from the glacier, turning into a hard rain as we hiked down, and a downpour just before we reached the busses back down to town. We were absolutely soaked when we got back to the B&B, but were thrilled to find Peter drawing a bath, clean clothes that Lucinda had laundered for us, and warm beds that we crashed into early.

Day 29: Franz Josef Glacier

We checked out the famous Pancake Rocks of Punakaiki this morning, which are certainly unusual. They’re apparently formed by alternating layers of sandstone and sea creatures, which then erode at different rates over time, leaving rocks that look like stacks of pancakes (pictures worth thousands of words). We then headed down to Franz Josef Glacier, stopping only when forced to by the occasional stock drive.

We hiked up to the base of Franz Josef Glacier, through the valley it has carved out over the last 18,000 years. It’s left behind a vast field of boulders and smaller rocks, broken down by the pressure of the glacier. Most of the trail was still covered 250 years ago apparently, so nothing has had a chance to re-grow, but given that there is rain forest on either side of the valley, you get the feeling that it won’t take long, assuming the glacier doesn’t advance all the way down the valley again (it is growing though, a few meters a year). Unfortunately I forgot to charge the camera battery last night, so no pictures, but we’ll get some tomorrow at Fox Glacier.

We stayed at the very nice Clearwater B&B last night, which is close to Fox Glacier. The owners, Peter and Lucinda, are very friendly, and it was nice to be back in a home again. We chatted with them for quite a while and enjoyed their company; they, like all the Kiwis we’ve met, are very friendly and nice. In addition to the B&B, they also have 800 head of cattle, some sheep, 3 goats, 2 dogs, and 5 peacocks! Oh yes, and 2 kids – it’s a busy household!