Nine Days of Beautiful Torture
Travel Stories from South Island, New Zealand
In 2018, I stumble upon a slick deal for round trip tickets to New Zealand for $500. As I was checking out (around 2 am in the morning) the deal was cut and I was left ever wanting more. Oceania was the last continent that I wanted to stop in before Antarctica.
One year later in the summer of 2019, I finally made it…except I’m here during the winter. That is how and why this article will be about a cold and sick traveler exploring Southern NZ.
Day 1: Arrival, 5 hr Drive to Fox Glacier
The plan was to GTFO of the Christchurch ASAP. Not only because South Island is known for its amazing scenery, but also because this was the first time I’d be driving on the left side of the road and therefore needed some time to readjust. Driving on the other side of the road isn’t hard, but you must train your brain to gauge the distance to the outer line differently. Also, the lever for the signaling lights is on the right-hand side; if I had to take a shot of whiskey for every time I accidentally used the wipers, I’d be dead in under an hour. It’s not easy to unlearn…
On the drive, we passed by one scene with sheep in the foreground, a lake in the midground, and mountains in the background. I only wish there’d been somewhere to pull over. This was our first taste of that epic scenery we’d heard so much about.
Day 2: Canceled Heli-hike, No Penguins & Lots of Sandflies…
I’d pre-booked a heli-hike at Fox Glacier, but we, unfortunately, got rained out (it rains there ~200 days of the year). The fog/mist that came with the rain left visibility of the glacier low even at ground level, making for unsafe helicopter conditions.
So instead, we drove onward down the west coast to Monro Beach, where Fiordland crested penguins migrate from the end of June to December to pair off and raise chicks, and can sometimes be spotted waddling across the beach into the rainforest. By the time we got there, the sky had momentarily given way to sunshine, making for excellent conditions for the 1-hour roundtrip hike. This ended up being the highlight of the walk as we sadly outpaced the penguins’ first arrival back to NZ (from the ocean where they live the rest of the year) by about a week. The lowlight? The dreaded NZ sandfly (i.e. their version of a mosquito), which “greeted” us as soon as we set foot on the beach, landing on our jackets by the dozens and making us wonder how anyone survives a NZ summer when sandflies are much more active.
Day 3: Shit, Mud, Snow, & Low Visibility at Roy’s Peak
To beat what we thought might be crowds, we headed straight to Roy’s Peak after making a quick instant ramen breakfast.
The first part of the hike was an intense climb of switchbacks. The second part of the hike was another climb of slightly less intense switchbacks. All the while, there were hundreds of sheep grazing and leaving poop all over the trail. If I kept my eyes on the scenery, there was a high chance that I could step on a land mine. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was just the passive-aggressive revenge against us for eating their kind.
I thought we were hiking slowly because we saw two guys hike passed us in stride. 40 minutes later, we see them paragliding down. I guess they must do this a lot as they clearly finished the hike hours before us. It probably took them less than 15 minutes to get back to their car.
We arrived at the most Instagrammed observation point (the photo everyone takes) 3 hours into the hike with no one around, but the fog rolled in and covered the view. There was absolutely nothing to see. We waited a good 45 minutes before it started to clear a little and finally saw glimpses of a beautiful view of the lake and the smaller mountains below between the rolling clouds. By then there was a crowd of people behind us and we just wanted to get a shot and get out of this slippery muddy nightmare. Of course, that’s how my drone, my camera, and my pants got mud all over them…
Instead of then starting our descent, we made (in retrospect a bad decision) to continue onward to the actual summit. We thought it would take another 30 minutes, but in actuality, it took another hour of trudging through slippery mud and frost to get to the peak. While we can now officially say we’ve conquered Roy’s Peak, the view at the peak was not as good as the observation point.
Going down was as just as hard as going up. By the time we were heading down, all the frost had melted and once again, the route was all slippery downhill mud. By halfway down, my legs started to hurt and I was really wishing I had brought a banana.
We finished the night at an amazing restaurant called Kaka. Amazing contemporary New Zealand cuisine. The deserts were the best on this trip. I highly recommend going early as they do not take reservations.
Day 4: Descent to Sickness from Wanaka to Te Anau
Surprisingly, just when we thought we’d conquered Roy’s Peak, the peak turned around and conquered us back. I must have overexerted because I came down with a serious cold and felt miserable for the next few days. It started with chills, then coughs, and finally a runny nose. I wished I didn’t have to get up and was sluggish throughout the day. However, I still wanted to see the famous tree everyone talks about. #ThatWanakaTree is apparently a thing. These are the images I took of the lake one hour apart.
Driving to Te Anau was like driving through Napa Valley. When we reached Te Anau, our first stop was visiting the famous glowworm caves (no photos were allowed). Quite an interesting experience. You descend into a cave and get on a boat with 13 other people, which the guide pulls in total darkness through the cave. The whole time, the cave walls are inches from your face. You can see the glow of the worms like stars at night.
Day 5: Milford Sound with Blue Skies and No Mood…
I did not want to get up for day 5. In fact, I almost didn’t go out, but it was the day we’d booked a tour for the Milford Sound, the 8th wonder of the world. It turns out we were the only people that booked the small group tour that day, and because the company still operates daily (delivering parcels along the route), we basically got a private tour of Milford Road. Our guide Becs from Trips and Tramps stopped at key photogenic viewpoints and gave us many insights into NZ. Probably one of the best tours I’ve ever been on.
We got onto the cruise around lunch and off into Milford Sound we went. It was a rare beautiful day; no clouds, blue skies. In a way, it was not the typical Milford Sound experience you see in photos. It rains about 300 days a year and sometimes up to a meter overnight.
We saw dolphins and fur seals. The wind was strong. It totally knocked me back from recovering fast. I was coughing a lot more because of it, but glad I went in the end.
Day 6: Te Anau, Queenstown, Kiwi Park, Spa, Gondola
Everyone says to spend more time in Queenstown, but I disagree. I come from a hilly city, and while Queenstown is beautiful, but I just couldn’t get myself to spend more time in a city. So it was a quick 1 day/night in Queenstown. We spent most the morning visiting the Kiwi Bird Park where we saw 4 Kiwi birds (once again, no photos allowed as they are nocturnal).
Then the afternoon was a relaxing Onsen/massage experience with a view — one of the first and only ‘spa days’ I’ve ever indulged in while traveling. There’s a roll-up garage-style door so if you are too cold, you can close the door. You lose the view to foggy windows though.
The night was a quick gondola ride up the mountain to have dinner at the top. I don’t recommend the dinner, but it was the only buffet that I been on during this trip. We might have missed the golden moment, but the view was equally spectacular with the city lights glittering while the mountains could still be seen.
Day 7: Aoraki / Mt Cook, Focus on Recovery
The drive through Twizel-Omarama Rd was foggy, but also one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever been on. Everything was in white and covered in the frost because the fog must have been trapped overnight and the water caught on the trees.
We drove into the Aoraki Lodge Resorts area and were pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was. No wind and no animals. Just pure silence. We focused on sleeping and recovery and didn’t go stargazing as I’d originally planned. I’ve recovered from the chills and muscle aches; now it is just the coughs. However, the night was so clear, I didn’t want to miss out (FOMO) so I captured these images from the parking lot of our motel.
Day 8: Tasman Valley Glacier Hiking Without Overexerting. Star Gazing in Lake Tekapo.
Because we had signed up for dive certification training to start in a few days, we really needed to try to recover as fast as we could. We took it slow and didn’t rush our hikes. We did all of the Tasman valley hikes. A friend had recommended the sunrise hike for Tasman Glacier (6 + hours round trip), but I had to save it for next time. Also, unfortunately, the Hooker valley hike (3 hours round trip) was closed past the first bridge and in the process of being repaired, though we may not have had the energy to attempt it regardless.
We made our way towards Tekapo and on the way near Pukaki, New Zealand greeted me with a bit of Karl: Low fog from San Francisco. A beautiful scene that I just had to stop the car to enjoy.
I did not plan for it but the weather was perfect for stargazing. It turned out to be completely clear, no moon, and not very cold at Tekapo. I highly recommend going with a tour to Mt John Observatory. They hand you Antartic jacket and take you up the mountain so you can look through their telescopes. I could see the rings of Saturn from one of them. The milky way was visible even before your eyes adjust to night vision.
I did stop by the Church of the Good Shepherd and found about 10–15 tourist standing up against the walled area to take a shot. I only stopped for 5 minutes and I got out of there really quick. Everyone just wanted THE SHOT, and everyone was talking in their respective languages about camera settings, not having enough height over the fence or not enough light. I looked around and found a small raised area and just went up, took 3 shots, got back into the car and drove away. The image is good, but there are literally millions of images on google from this angle.
Day 9: Slow Crawl to Christchurch
The last day in New Zealand was the hardest. While the recovery was picking up, we were still really tired from staying up late the night before and had a few hours drive from Tekapo to Christchurch ahead of us. We also slept in and headed out around noon. We have an incredibly early flight of 4 am the next morning so the only thing we did in Christchurch is to visit the Transitional Church by Shigeru Ban. In 2011, the main church as damaged from an Earthquake, the town needed a structure not just as a church, but as a gathering and multiuse space. The structure is comprised of 86 A-frame cardboard tubes with steel reinforcements. The enclosure is mostly polycarbonate panels. The walls are like a ruled surface as two different shaped triangles flank each end: one wider for entry and the other narrower for focus. The lighting and spacial qualities inside was spectacular considering it was designed and built within a year just in time for the earthquakes first anniversary.
After a quick stop at Samurai Bowl, a decent ramen shop in Christchurch, we headed back to our hotel for a quick nap so we could fly off to Australia. It was a quick 9 days. We were tired. We were sick. But we saw a lot of beauty from the South Island of New Zealand. Until next time…
TLDR — Got sick but still saw many beautiful things in South Island New Zealand.
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