New Zealand: Helihiking the Franz Josef Glacier

After the underwater adventure, we headed on down the coast to Hokitika. We stopped at Punekiki to see the blowholes and pancake rocks but sadly the sun had gone down so all we saw was a few possums in the moonlight. We could hear the amazing booming of the blowholes but couldn't see the spray that sometimes goes several hundred feet in the air - something for next time we're down here.

The hotel at Hokitika was nothing too special, but we were there less than 12 hours and it served it's purpose well. We had a surreal dinner at the hotel restaurant where the waitress/hostess was remarkably unenthusiastic about her job. When we first arrived at 8:30 for dinner she had to "check with the cook" to make sure they could still serve us dinner as they closed at 9. Then when we were seated and started looking at the menu, Mandy asked what the soup du jour was, only to be told to wait until she went through the specials - which she then proceeded to do right then. Other oddities included deferring our request for water to the "waitress" whom we had not seen up to that point. I guess this is the downside to not tipping at restaurants!

So anyway, we left Hokitika at 7am to drive to the Franz Josef glacier for our 8:45am check-in. It was a remarkably cloud-free morning for the west coast of the south island, so our hopes were high that the flight wouldn't be cancelled. We arrived a few minutes late to check in after driving through some of the most beautiful valleys and pastoral scenes of sheep grazing beneath enormous mountains besides the ocean.

After getting the all clear, we went to put on our stinky glacier hiking boots (which we had to use so that the "talons" would fit on the soles). There were about 20 or so people there and they asked us to split into two groups... one that felt a bit more adventurous and up for some moderate hiking, and the other for people who wanted to go slow. Greg, mandy and I and 2 other people self-selected as moderately fit, the rest stood in a slightly confused mass until the guides forced 5 others onto our side... an indicator of the speed of walking that we'd do! The helicopter took 5 of us at a time and we were in the first group. It was the first time in a helicopter for all of us, so we got a lot of thrills out of the ride. The pilot took us up and over the top of the entire glacier and then did a few passes over the different sections of the glacier. They said the snow in the fastest part of the glacier moves about 3 metres a day (that's 10 feet), and the end of the glacier is currently advancing at about 2 feet a day after several years of receding.
We landed in the middle of a flat section of the glacier that doesn't move much and got out to put on our talons (which are sort of lightweight crampons). Once the second half of our group arrived, our guide Troy led us off across the glacier. Troy cut steps in various parts of the glacier with a big pickaxe he carried around, while we just had little ice axes to help us balance and hoist ourselves around various places.
We hiked around for about 2 hours making a big loop around the glacial flats. We went through some crevasses and even an undiscovered ice cave that mandy was the first non-guide to go through ever! We encountered crevasses and dangers that included icy potholes that went down several feet and were full of freezing water. We all managed to avoid them but a few in our party went in up their knee and one poor woman fell into one all the way up to her waist... she was very brave about it. In the end we had a very fun walk around amazing ice pillars and deep blue ice caves (the compressed ice only reflects the higher frequency lightwaves which gives the ice an unreal blue tinge).
On our helicopter flight back down the glacier, the pilot asked us if we wanted to have a little fun, or get "the granny tour". Of course we wanted to have some fun, so he swooped around the mountains beside the glacier, and took us in low over the river before making a stomach churning turn and coming in for a perfect landing.
After some lunch at the base, we drove down to Queenstown for our final two days. The drive took us about 4 and a half hours through some beautiful snowcapped mountains and we finally arrived at the Queenstown House at about 5:30, with plenty of time to spare for wine and cheese!

New Zealand: Under World Rafting!!

We left Nelson pretty early this morning to drive South to Charleston (which is just south of Westport). Charleston is a small town (150 people), but many years ago (New Zealand’s Gold Rush) the town population was up to 130,000 people and there was talk of making it New Zealand’s Capital. We were doing the Underworld Rafting adventure. This company was started in 1987 by two teachers, Ray and Geoff, who were taking their students on this adventure when many of the parents said they would also like to participate.

When we arrived they outfitted us with all of our gear – wet suits, boots, life vests and of course a helmet with a head lamp. The gear was a bit wet and a little stinky. .

We were teamed up with a German group and we loaded into the vans to be transported to our start. Geoff and Ray have built a train (including laying all of the tracks by hand) that takes you through the rainforest to get to the bottom of the caves. Once we stopped at the end of the line we got into our gear


We took a short walk along the Nile River and crossed a suspension bridge (also built by the team). From here we ascended 117 steps to the top of the caves (by now Greg’s stinky wet suit was overwhelming him).

We entered the caves at the Triclops entrance – the caves are exactly as they were found and so we were very careful not to touch any of the formations.



All of the formations are formed from pure calcium carbonate – and just amazing! This area has lots of volcanic activity but the limestone areas in the cave remain perfectly still preserving the formations. The stalactites and stalagmites grow at 1 inch per five hundred years – slow going.



We ducked and shuffled through the caves to see all of the different rooms – I was feeling happy about being a bit vertically challenged, especially as I followed Greg. Many places in the caves the stalactites had grown to meet the stalagmites creating columns – .

Once we had made it through the formations we moved into another part of the caves where we could see water. Now for everyone who talked to me before I left, I was so excited for the glow worms – they brochure says you get to raft through caves using only the lights from the glowworms. As our guide pointed out a few glowworms I began getting really excited – then he said a flood had come through in January and wiped a lot of the worms away. I was feeling crushed. The four glow worms that we were looking at were cool but where were the sea of shiners...



Ray had us get into our tubes and practice steering by using our hand paddles. We were floating around in cave wondering where it was that we were going to get out.



Ray had us hook our feet together like a train and turn off our headlamps. He took the back position and began paddling us and told us to keep our heads down. He pulled us through a narrow opening in the cave (it was a super tight fit) and once through he turned off his head lamp and VIOLA! There were the glow worms – tons of them.



We floated through the caves in the dark and eventually we could see light. The caves open up into the lush forest – an area that would be hard to get to unless you were in our tubes.



From here we floated into the nile river and down the rapids. We exited the river and got back on the train back to Charleston. I had my expectations set pretty high for this trip and they were totally exceeded – for those coming to NZ this is a must. I think they also have glow worm caves on the north island, but rafting through the dark only lit by glow worms can’t be beat!! This rocked!

Abel Tasman kayaking

New Zealand Part three – Adventuring in Abel Tasman

I have decided that I am a First Class Adventurer – I love to explore, adventure, hike (insert activity here) but at the end of the day I like a hot shower and good food. Somehow I convinced Mark and Greg that for this trip we should ALL be first class adventurers… so let the adventure begin!

We started out for kayaking just outside of Nelson in the Abel Tasman National Park– we booked the trip through Abel Tasman Kayaks and we opted for the 2 day tour with Lodge stay (key word here is Lodge). We met our guide at 8:30 am and gathered all of our gear (jackets, spray skirts, life vests) and had a quick safety briefing – we headed down to Marahau beach and began our journey. There were 6 total in our group plus our guide Jake. Mark and I were in one kayak, Greg teamed up with Rachel (a dutch girl visiting NZ) and Eva and Mike were in another. We headed North up the coast passing many “Bach’s” which are only accessible by foot or water taxi – actually all of Abel Tasman is only accessible by foot or Water Taxi (that water taxi is quite a business). We made our first stop at Apple Tree bay for morning tea (I love it here!) .
We pushed off again and continued our voyage north – the weather was beautiful, sun shining and great seas, including an unusual “Sou-wester” which allowed us to raft together put up a sail harness the wind for a while on our way to Watering Cove where we stopped for Lunch. .

Jake (our guide) cooked up some green lipped mussels (Yummers!) and beef skewers which we enjoyed with Pita Bread and Salad. It was quite a feast on the beach. After lunch Jake let us loose and sent us off on a hike to Torrent Bay Lodge. (Don’t worry all of our luggage was taxi’d up to the lodge ahead of us!). We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking through the beautiful bush (the NZ jungle). Much of the walk was a trail through the jungle with a thick canopy of ferns, trees and vines. We decided to go the long route and head over to Cleopatra’s pool where the water from the river gushed over some boulders.
We made it to the lodge around 4:30 to find no one – we were amazed at this lodge in the middle of the National Park supplied only by boat – but somehow it had hot showers, beer!!, and a full professional Kitchen. Craig Wilson, the Chef and owner of the Lodge, prepared us an amazing dinner of Lamb, roast vegetables and salad. Craig actually cooked for Paul and Linda McCartney (this ones for my mom) and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. The lodge holds 24 and the night we stayed there were 10 total guests. After dinner we retired to the lounge for chatter, but headed to bed early.

A new guide, KP, met us the next morning and we took a Sea Taxi up to Onetahuti Bay (more north). We geared up and headed back out to sea, heading out to see the Seal Colony on Tonga Island. Again we had amazing weather (luck is on our side). We kept our distance from the seals – similar to the river otters, if you scare seals they won’t return to the island.

We continued down to Mosquito Bay where we had lunch – this was an amazing beach. We brought our kayaks up on a sand bar and by the time we were done with lunch we had to drag them back to the water because of the tide. . We were in the water about 4 hours by the time we returned to Torrent Bay. From here we took a water taxi back to Marahau Beach where we expected to get off the boat. Instead the driver drove the boat onto a boat ramp that was connected to a tractor. The tractor pulled us out of the water and then drove us back to Abel Tasman Kayaks headquarters in the boat.
We headed back to Nelson to spend the night in a great little house – the Sea View Holiday house (great find greg) where we had fish and chips and watched A History of Violence (I guess lugging our NetFlix all this way paid off). Next we are off to do underworld rafting…