Lord of the views: an unexpected detour
Last time, our heroes had just arrived back in Te Anau, a small city outside Milford Sound, lounging around after two incredible days of fjords, glowworms, and sandfly massacres. It was mid-morning, and we just wanted to relax. Little did I did know the remainder of this day was going to crush my spirit entirely.
We wanted to do an activity that wouldn’t break the bank, wasn’t too physically taxing, and would let us enjoy the nice weather. We settled on disc golf — Jelle had never played before and I had only played once, but once we got the hang of it, we had an absolute blast. We had so much fun that after the 18th hole we decided to turn right around and play the entire 18 over again. As a degenerate gambler, I of course had to make the game more interesting somehow…as such, we agreed to a round of match play for dish duty. Thank god we instituted a mercy rule beforehand…one of us is about to try out for the Netherlands national lacrosse team, and the other one of us spent 12 years in musicals. I’ve never seen a frisbee fly farther in my life.
A week of dish duty later, and it was time for my next humiliation. There were no freedom camping sites in Te Anau, so we stayed at a nicer paid site which happened to include a game room. While setting up shop for the night, we befriended our campsite neighbors, a young British couple — after dinner, they challenged us to foosball. Jelle and I teamed up and I was the LVP (least valuable player) in a string of two losses for us. Jelle and I played after and he also smoked me. Later that night, Jelle and I played our usual evening match of kabuki (card game) and he shut me down in that as well. The only saving grace I had on the day was my dominance in air hockey — I assume a lifetime of trigger-finger first person shooter video games has some benefit after all.
The following morning, we realized we had not a clue of where to go next. Luckily, our foosball victors had the answer: they had just arrived from the south and raved about it’s beauty. Their excitement was contagious and we were soon on our way: the new plan was to head south until we ran out of island then loop back northeast.
We’d soon discover we were entering a land of coastlines that stretched on forever, rare penguin, and…precious gems?
One of our first stops was at a gemstone beach, where nestled among the more boring rocks, big surf, and glacial streams, one can find beautiful stones. We met an Australian super-enthusiast, dragging along his decidedly-less-enthusiastic wife, who provided us with a gemstone identification chart of his own design and gave us some pointers. After that, we were consumed with gemstone fever for the rest of the day, keeping our eyes glued to the sand for the glint of buried treasure. We’ve been listening to The Hobbit audiobook, so many Gollum jokes were made.
We also made a pit stop at the southernmost point of New Zealand, getting as close to Antarctica as possible. It was a beautiful spot, with dramatic coastlines and rolling green hills, but there was certainly an extra feeling of adventure in the air just staring south at the open sea toward the true bottom of the world.
That night, we stayed at a peaceful beach site, building our first campfire of the trip. We also recorded an awesome timelapse of us drinking beers in front of the setting sun that I’m confident I’ll never figure out how to upload to Medium.
The next day, we visited a petrified forest, which was pretty underwhelming, as well as several waterfalls that were considerably more whelming. One of them featured terrace-like platforms with good footbolds — naturally, we made the ascent.
We also visited Roaring Bay, nesting colony of the rarest penguin species in the world — the yellow-eyed penguin. There are less than 300 breeding pairs left; once we learned that fact we became consumed with seeing one. These penguins are quite shy, and even seeing a human can be catastrophic for their numbers — the adult penguins fish all day in the ocean, returning to their nests to feed the chicks at night. If the adult senses danger on the beach, it will stay in the waves offshore, slowly digesting the fish, which can lead their young to starve. As a result, the Department of Conservation has built an observation blind up on a ridge above the colony so humans can observe these birds. After 15min of our faces pressed up against the glass, I finally spotted a large black body swimming gracefully within a breaking wave. The penguin soon made its way to shore, hopping from rock to rock in an extremely adorable way. We also stopped by Nugget Point, a lighthouse vista with “nuggets” — giant stone slabs — jutting out of the water.
We had dinner in a local pub that night, where I began rebuilding my dignity by beating Jelle in a game of pool. We also had some fantastic fish and chips, and watched the sunset. With no free sites around for the evening, we resolved to staying at the cheapest one we could find, which turned out to be a farm in the middle of nowhere where we were the only camper present. It was run by a very nice, but also slightly unsettling older woman. I think there’s some recent M Night Shamalayan movie about mental patients who pose as a pair of grandparents to unsuspecting children (spoiler alert I guess) — anyway, got extremely those vibes. Jelle did not appreciate me referring to it as the Murder Farm for the duration of our stay.
The following day, we did some hiking around Butcher’s Gully. This area is really cool: it’s situated in the “rain shadow” just on the leeward side of the Southern Alps (meaning, away from the wind). The Alps trap moisture on the windward side of the mountain, dumping huge amounts of rain, while the leeward side sees hardly any. In practice, driving up and over the Alps means going from lush alpine greenery to an arid landscape in less than 10 minutes. Our Lord of the Rings Filming Location Senses were tingling, as this area seemed very similar to when the orcs were on the march. That night, we stayed at another beautiful campsite on the shores of Lake Dunstan, where I beat Jelle in kabuki, thus further bringing honor back to my family name.
We drove through the Lindis Pass the next. morning and hiked around the Benmore Peninsula. Lake Benmore was absolutely turquoise, and it’s elongated shape and mountain background made this one of the best hikes of our trip.
We then headed for the “clay cliffs,” which despite its uninspired name, did prove to be well worth the trip. There wasn’t much to learn about these cliffs, as they were on privately-owned land, so here they are: some cliffs.
We passed a disc golf course on the way to the campsite, and the following morning we were unable to resist — so there we were, out on Twizel’s disc golf course. We only played 27 holes this time. While Jelle was routing me on the first 18, I discovered a new weapon in my disc golf arsenal: the hammer throw. It has deadly accuracy and mediocre consistency — a double threat for both of our novice playstyles. On our third nine, I finally beat him by a hole.
It was then time for us to journey along the lake out to Mt. Cook. This is NZ’s highest mountain, and it’s welcome mat certainly fits the occasion: you drive along one of the largest, most turquoise lakes you’ve ever seen until you reach a gently sloping U-shaped valley to its north — a tell-tale sign of glacial origins.
Mt. Cook and it’s surrounding peaks draped in the arctic blue remnants of the Tasman glacier welcome you into their laps on the final leg of the drive. When we rolled into town, a heavy gray curtain shrouded the mountains in freezing mist, adding to their air of mystery. We did a short day hike out to the Blue Lakes and had dinner at a local pub (where we learned Jelle is good at darts, I guess) before catching the end of the world rugby cup and calling it an early night.
We had ambitious plans the following day. Waking up before sunrise, we set out on the Hooker Valley track, one of the most popular in the area. This route takes you across three swing bridges which span glacial rivers and out to Hooker Lake. The lake is an eerie light blue; strewn with icebergs and the shore is littered with clear ice. At the far end, a low blue cliff face makes up the shoreline — the Tasman glacier itself.
We arrived back at our van around noon for lunch and some rest before tackling our second hike of the day: the Red Tarns track. This one was a bit more tough — an hour and a half of nothing but narrow stairs up the side of a mountain across from Mt Cook. The route is actually 75% of the famed Mueller Hut track, which we were unable to fully complete due to snow cover and avalanche risk. And indeed, toward the top of this trek, we started hiking through boot-deep snow. We were rewarded with sweeping views of Hooker Lake and the U-shaped valley to the south, as well as with an encounter with a kea: a high mountain parrot too smart for its own good.
By the end of this 11 mile day, we were both too tired to make the hour-long northeast drive to Lake Tekapo, so we settled for a beautiful sunset at nearby Lake Pukaiki instead. Until next time!
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