Robert (New Zealand) - Dusky

Oi. It's a busy time. It's been so long since my last update, I don't really know where to start.
After Routeburn classes continued as normal in Christchurch. The media was all up in tizzy about a car show that was supposed to bring thousands of boy racers to the streets of the city. Sure enough, riding the bus back from a cook-out at one of the student's houses the streets were filled with cars filled with testosterone filled young men, and a few women. I have also finally seen The Wizard who is a man well enough known in Christchurch to warrant an entry in the New Zealand Rough Guide. On a regular basis this guy shows up in Cathedral Square in a red VW Beetle made from two front halves welded together, wearing a black robe and wizard hat, stands on a stepladder, and babbles about the shitty state the world is in for hours on end.
For a weekend excursion we went south an hour, to the Banks Peninsula to visit a nature reserve that's trying to regenerate native forests. They're a bit unconventional in that they're using Gorse, an invasive weed, to help create a suitable habitat for the trees to retake the land. We also stopped by Akaroa, one of the few towns in New Zealand that was colonized predominantly by the French.
Last week were out mid-terms which were pretty painless. Once mid-terms were done we traveled north to Kaikoura, a coastal town known for it's ocean wildlife and good fishing. Our program arranged for us to go on a "Dolphin Encounter" boat, so we got to snorkel with wild Dusky Dolphins in the ocean. They're very friendly and will swim right up to just inches away and then circle with you. It was touristy as all hell, but still pretty cool. At night we found a nice but expensive pub. I got into a drunken argument with my professor about the nature of ethics and had some really interesting discussions about sustainability with some of the other students. We also went on a Maori run tour of the area. It ended in the wharenui (meeting house) on their marae which is covered in carvings and paintings telling the history of the Ngai Tahu tribe. The guides also gave us Maori names which seemed pretty lame to me until it was revealed that they were just the numbers one through nine. After coming back from Kaikoura I finally met up with Sophie from Beloit who's studying at the University of Canterbury this semester. We had drinks at the student bar and caught up on our time here thus far. It was nice to see a somewhat familiar face from the states other than the people on my program.
Now on to the real point of this post which is my spring (technically fall) break. I ended up doing a hike with Kirk, Susan, and Ed on the Dusky Track in Fiordland National Park. Fiordland is a large wilderness area that covers the south-west corner of the South Island of New Zealand. It's named for the many its many fjords (although New Zealand doesn't use the cooler spelling), and consists mostly of rolling mountains and valleys. The Dusky Track is one of the most demanding trails in New Zealand. The three big things you hear about it are that it's remote, muddy, and that there are lots of 3-wire bridges. The Department of Conservation try to make it very clear that it's only for experienced hikers because they have a lot of trouble with people going in unprepared and having to be evacuated, so we weren't entirely sure how much of the descriptions were scare tactics to make sure able people do the track, and how much was actual descriptions of the difficulty level.
We rented a car and drove down to a small town called Tuatapere, making stops at a winery to sample fine wines and buy a bottle, and in Queenstown to buy tickets for the huts on the trail. We found a nice camping spot just north of Tuatapere next to an old suspension bridge over a river. After sorting out our food and group gear we drank our bottle of wine while looking over trail maps and then went out stargazing on the bridge.
When I said that the trail was remote, what I meant was that there is no road access to it. You can only get in on a boat or a water plane. We hired a charter boat to take us across Lake Hauroko to the trailhead. Much of the boat ride in was spent realizing that we had forgotten various things ranging from the unimportant (soy sauce) to the slightly more important (our hut tickets). The scenery was beautiful though. Tall hills and mountains falling strait into the lake. The guy we chartered the boat with pointed out that at one point when we were maybe 15 meters from the shore, the bottom of the lake was almost half a kilometer below us.
The trail we walked would not have been considered trail on most walks. When it's flat, the chances are it's a bog, with mud pits ranging from just a few centimeters deep, to thigh deep. The only way to not fall in is to carefully step on fallen logs and roots, and sometimes you can't even do that and just need to walk through it. When it's hilly you're climbing up and down slopes covered in rocks and roots. Sometimes the trail would rise or fall vertically ten or twenty feet and you'd have to climb using roots and stones and hand holds (all with a hiking pack on mind you). At times it was maddening, but it was also cool to have to pay so much attention to where you were walking. The trail was always changing and always interesting. In a way the trail was part of the beauty of the track with all of it's moss covered roots and slopes. It also felt great at the end of the day to think back on what you overcame. We also became very familiar with the infamous 3-wire bridges which are exactly what they sound like. One wire to walk on and two to hold onto on either side with a few supporting struts to keep them steady.
The first night we stayed at Halfway Hut which was swamped with Sandflies. I have to say that the sandflies were really the only part of the trip that I really disliked, but you have to take the bad with the good. We also met Margaret and Janet, two Kiwi women (probably in their sixties) who were hiking the same way as us. While the first day was relatively flat, the second day we moved up to the alpine zone above the treeline. I had a hilarious moment with Susan in a bog while we were still in the lowlands. I tried to jump over a muddy creek and lost my footing but had enough forward momentum to launch me horizontally on to the shore where I lay for a good thirty seconds on my face with my pack on top of me while Susan laughed and took pictures. We stayed at Lake Roe Hut which had many fewer sandflies thanks to being higher up. At night we celebrated St. Paddy's day by drinking Guinness and Jim Beam that we had carried in.
We stayed an extra day at Lake Roe and did a day hike off trail up Mt. Tamatea, which was the highest peak in the area of the trail. It was actually a pretty easy, although long, ascent. The area was pockmarked with tarns which are pools of water which have a bizarre tendency to be sort of terraced on rolling hills. You'll have two pools just a few feet apart and one will be a good foot higher than the other, but there will be no drainage from the higher pool. It doesn't sound too cool when written down, but trust me, it's surreal. The view from Tamatea was amazing. Looking west we could see out to Dusky Sound, and beyond it all the way out to the Tasman Sea. Looking down the eastern slope was a mountain lake that you could watch the wind sweeping patterns on.
The hut was full that night (so much for a remote tramp). In the night some Keas, a species of alpine parrot, attacked the hut. The Kea is a beautiful bird, but they're known for being very destructive. Unfortunately my water purifier pump got left outside and was mauled. I remember going through Biosecurity at Auckland Airport (New Zealand is serious about keeping out unwanted animals and parasites) and worrying that they'd take my water pump because it might have water parasites in it. Never did I think I'd actually end up loosing it to alpine parrots.
The next day we hiked across an alpine ridge line, past more tarns, and then down a steep, steep, slope. There was one point where a chain had been locked into the one of the vertical drops in the trail to help hikers lower themselves or climb. At the end of the seemingly eternal decent was Lock Maree Hut. Loch Maree is a swamped forest so the lake is filled with tree stumps poking up out of the water. It's a rule of thumb that if there's been enough rain to rise the like to the point that you can't see the stumps, then the trail is flooded and you shouldn't leave the hut. Fortunately for us the water was quite low. The following day was pretty level which of course meant lots of mud, including one of our only waste deep mud puts which Susan was kind enough to discover for us. We also had to wade through a stream at one point. At Kintail Hut we met up with Janet and Margaret again (they had gone ahead when we took an extra day and Lake Roe). Margaret gave me a haircut, which was desperately needed (I was headed towards the doofy clown fro of frashman year). We also swam in the river near the hut.
Moving on from Kintail we hiked up and over a steep ridge (more vertical sections with chains). As we got close to the pass at a saddle in the top of the ridge a rain storm started to pick up coming from the other side. Up until this point we had had beautiful sunny weather, very fortunate considering it rains 300+ days a year in Fiordland. As soon as we came up over the saddle and out of the lee of the ridge we were slammed with winds so strong that they literally knocked us over a few times. The wind created massive sheets of rain which was really cool because you could actually see the wind gusts coming towards you. We got down back below treeline as quickly as possible ate a quick lunch and then booked it down to our last hut through the cold and rain. As the track leveled out towards the end there were times where the trail was basically a ditch just wide enough for one person that came up to waste level on the sides. On top of this were large ferns that came up to about head level.
At Upper Spey Hut we built a fire in the stove to try to dry off our cloths which was really a lost cause for the most part. By sunset the rain had stopped and the clouds glowed bright orange. We ate our last dinner and made rice pudding with our extra rice. In the morning we began our hike out down the valley towards Lake Manapouri. Naturally there was more mud and flooded streams to cross, although by this point I just walked strait through half the time. We did come to a flat dry meadow at one point which totally blew our minds. Normal trail conditions just seemed foreign by that point. The last section of the track was along a road to a remote power station to catch our boat back to the outside world. It was really cool to go from the trail to a gravel road, to a paved road and then finally to see buildings. It was like slowly walking into civilization from the wild. I'm used to just getting to a car park, piling into a vehicle, and leaving. The power station is some sort of sub-terrain hydro plant run by a New Zealand power company that is actually trying (rather successfully) to be carbon neutral. Unfortunately we arrived just in time to catch our boat out so we couldn't poke around or tour the station.
The boat was full of tourists who had come to look at Doubtful Sound (the fjord at the other end of the road form the power plant). I'm sure they didn't appreciate the smell of us. Once in the town of Manapouri we planned for one of us to hitchhike down to Tuatapere to pick up the car. I volunteered to hitch. It turns out that either I suck at hitching, or it was just not realistic to catch a ride out of Manapouri. After three hours on the side of the road with no one stopping I gave up. We were all sitting in a park, planning on throwing out our sleeping bags and living the homeless life for a night when a strange thing happened. Couples out walking their dogs started coming up to us and offering us a place to stay for a night. One even sent their son over in a car to pick us up. So there we went, into some perfect strangers house where we slept, showered, and snacked for free, and spent the night playing RISK with the son and his friends. It was surreal.
This morning I woke up before sunrise, reserved a seat on a shuttle headed for Tuatapere, and went down to get the car. We booked it back to Christchurch and dropped everyone off at their respective houses.
Tomorrow morning the program leaves for a one week excursion to an eco-lodge on the west coast. I should probably pack for that now and get some sleep, but I don't think going another week without updating would probably have resulted in a novel for my next post.

Things I have been appreciating:

-Finally starting to be at least somewhat familiar with the metric system
-Driving on the left side of the road
-The Sky. Even around Christchurch the sky is amazing. A couple weeks ago I saw a rainbow every day for a couple days strait including one at sunset.
-Making mathematical graphs to determine when the joy of having alcohol on a camping trip is undercut by the pain of carrying the extra weight.
-The man in the old army jeep with a pipe who drove by us when we got back from Kaikoura and Jay's reaction of "Did 1942 just drive by?"
-Montieth's Radler beer. It's beer that tastes like Sprite. It actually tastes more like American Sprite than New Zealand Sprite does. Not always what you want from a beer, but amusing none the less.
-Finding beauty in situations that would normally be considered by most to be miserable
-Walking out the door of my room in the morning to expectant looking cats waiting to be fed
-Good nights sleep