Last Of NZ

Longest post ever - embrace yourselves.

It was a normal Thursday. I was half way through my long trip abroad, all I have in two bags scattered in the back of my old car, and I was driving in the afternoon around Christchurch, with only one little inconsequential difference - my parents were sitting in the car.

It was the strangest feeling. After 2 and half months of travelling along, you come into a routine, which feels normal and natural.

This was unnatural.

It felt like someone had cut my parents from home, and pasted them onto the seats next to me, in my old grey blue car.

Their flights were surprisingly good, so because we had a packed and condensed schedule ahead, we decided not prolong our stay in Christchurch, and drove about an hour to "the banks peninsula", which is a cog shaped volcano land peninsula. The drive was beautiful, with huge green hills run deep into the ocean. We had received an amazing sunset over the Akaroa bay, a small sleepy town on the shore of one of the many water bays along the peninsula.

We slept just outside town, in a beautiful residential, and the next morning drove into town and booked a bicycle trip around the peninsula. Comfortably enough, the company takes you to the top of the hills, and all you have to do is ride down. It was the first I hopped on a bike since south America, which was 5 years ago, but my parents looked like it was the first time for them since the six days war. It was a struggle for all of us to control the bikes at first, but after 10 minutes of shaky hands, we were on our way. The ride down was great fun, cruising on meandering roads, cutting calmly through the wind. There is something about riding a bike (or motorcycle, for that matter), that makes you feel the road and experience it much more than in a car.

The ride down ended in a nice secluded beach, ready with a small picnic set by the guy operating the trip. We sat for a brief hour, drinking wine and eating bread with cheese dipped in olive oil (with balsamic vinegar, of course), all falling perfectly into context.

The same day we drove all the way to Arthur’s pass, which is the passage between the east and west coast, rising over the southern New Zealand Alps.
The next morning we went on a short walk onto one of the mountains surrounding the narrow mountain road. We walked uphill for about an hour, until we rose above the tree like onto the bush line, and stopped to admire the view and my elaborated PAKAL CAFE.

On the way up my mom wanted me to take her picture standing on the trek side, on a rock half sunk in water, so as she stepped on the rock, the wet surface had her slipping and falling into the shallow water. Luckily, no harm was done except her camera getting slightly damp, so she didn’t want to open it and risk breaking it, and so because I have 2 cameras, I gave my small camera to her, for the time being.

An artist goes through several stages in his artistic life.

In the spring of 1886, Van Gough moved to Paris, where he met some impressionistic artists like Dega and Pisaro, who influenced him and his work by adding more vibrant variation to his painting techniques.

Between 1782 and 1783, Mozart was acquainted with the work of some great Baroque composers like Bach and Hendel, which brought him to compose some symphonies imitating the old style, mainly evident in his 41st symphony, “The Magic Flute” and “The Requiem”.

My mom is in her "Blurry" period. She apparently finds enchanted beauty in holding her (or my) little Canon pocket camera in front of some random object, plant, tree or animal, and when pressing the “Shoot” button, quickly and vulgarly moving her hand around, thus creating a fuzzy effect like this:

This will unquestionably leave her blurry signature on the unfocused pages of history. :)

After coming back from the small hike, we drove another 3 hours to the township of Franz Josef, which is the base to all glacier walks and tours in the region.

The Franz Josef glacier is a massive bulk mixture of rock and glacial ice, running down from a mountain top, filling the valley with blue and white frozen giant ice. We booked a helicopter ride onto the glacier and with a guided group walked the icy plateau for 2 hours. The group was a mixture of several nationalities: a German girl by herself, a Danish guy with his English girlfriend, two (small) Japanese girls, 3 Israelis (yours truly), and an American Couple - a quite and disgruntled old guy with his incredibly, unbelievably, extraordinarily, amazingly, really really really annoying wife. She was the epiphany of all things irritating. Everything about her walk, her manners and especially the things she said was ridiculously annoying. She held the whole group joined in hatred for her, as there is nothing more bonding than pure, positive, honest hatred.

The glacier walk was astounding.

We were given metal spikes to fit on our shoes, to prevent slipping, and an ice pick to keep balance, and on we went for the hike. We passed some beautiful blue ice caves, climbed a rocky blend of ice and dirt, and were even tied and lowered into a tight icy shaft.

After returning to safe grounds, we drove to the township of Fox Glacier, which is the smaller sister of Franz Josef, also holding tours and walks on the less impressive Fox Glacier. We had a nice evening in town, and the next morning drove outside town to Lake Matheson, which has a nice 1 hour circular walk around it, providing great views over to the glacier, mount Tasman and Mount Cook, on the other side of the Alps, should weather provide. The weather didn’t provide.

The walk was nice, but most mountains remained in a cloudy mist, so we were left with familiar reflections of white-grey cloudy slops.

We embarked on a long 6 hours drive to Queenstown, but the views on the way were just unbelievably spectacular. Many roads in the south island I had to drive a second time, but I could not remain indifferent to the brilliant yellow evening light painting the valley drive from Wanaka to Queenstown in rich deep honey gold colour.

We arrived to “The Little Paradise” lodge, a small residential hostel with a huge green garden, handmade by the couple running the place. The beautiful garden was filled with fruit trees, wooden and stone statues and streams of water flowing about. The place was a bit too meticulous, but still very special.

That evening we drove into Queenstown, and went looking for a place to eat dinner. We came across a South African restaurant called “Flame”, on the lake side. On our way to the table, we passes two people sitting and eating what can only described as heaven on earth - a whole unseparated ribcage, barbequed into golden perfection, simmered in a special house divine sauce.

As the waitress approached the table, all three of us looked at her and said: “I’ll have what he’s having”.

I won’t go into too much detail, to spare your keyboards from jealousy drool, but I will state that it was one of the best dinners of my life, and that all of us just thought about Rotem and Ynam, and how much they would have enjoyed it.

The next day we found out that the day’s calculation was wrong, and we have another day before the Milford Trek, so we decided to stay another day in Queenstown, and drive the next day through the beautiful Catlins region. But before that I had in mind to persuade my dad to sky dive with me.

He wasn’t as difficult to persuade as I thought, and after a small brawl we were on our way to the airfield.

The whole routine took shorter than you can really think about what you’re about to do, and after gearing up and being run by safety instructions, we were on a plane rising to an altitude of 12,000 feet.

The jump was awesome!

The whole thing wasn’t scary at all, except the one second you are outside the plane, suspended in midair, only connected to the guy behind you, and when he jumps, the first 3 seconds feel like you are falling (because you are falling!), so that’s a bit scary, but the 45 seconds free fall was exhilarating, and flew by so fast.

On the ground I was thrilled to find my dad happy and content with the experience.

The next day we drove to the beautiful region called the Catlins, located on the southern part of the south island, stretching from east to west on an incredible coast line of rugged cliff beaches, hundreds of green hills sparkled with millions of sheep and cows. We stopped at a place called nugget point, where huge rocks in the shape of gold nuggets decorate the beach.

The next day we drove around the beautiful countryside, stopping on several places for some short walks and coffee breaks.

That night we arrived to Te Anau, from where we were to start the Milford Trek, two days later. We used the next day to gear up, as my parents needed to rent sleeping bags, and after making sure we have everything we need, we drove to the place from where the ferry will pick us up - Te Anau Downs, 29 km outside Te Anau. We got there fairly early, so we decided to make use of the rest of the day, and drive to the Milford Sound, the place where the trek ends, as the drive there is supposed to be spectacular, and seeing it through the window of a bus misses the point.

The drive was indeed amazingly beautiful, with hundreds of waterfalls running down the mountains around us. We passed a 1 km long tunnel through one of the mountains, and arrived to the Milford Sound. The weather was very cloudy, so the view was nice but not what it could have been.

We drove back to Te Anau Downs, and had a good night sleep before the trek.

We hopped on the ferry at 10:30, and after an hour’s ride, we disembarked on the starting point of the most famous trek in the world. The Milford Trek is a 4 days trek, holding 3 huts on the way; each is the home of 48 different weary tourists every day. The first day was only 5 km long, to enable a couple of ferries to bring people from distant cities, but that meant that at 13:00, we were already at the first hut, with nothing to do all day. The walk was easy and nice, just a gentle climb for about 90 minutes - a positive first experience with our bags on out backs. We spent the rest of the day meeting people traveling with us, making dinner and playing cards.

The next day we left pretty early, as we were to cover 16km. The walk was beautiful; starting is a marshland, red and greed blended together into a mixture of bright vivid colors, onto dense green shrubbery surrounding a well marked path through the woods, onto a wide stretched prairie, with tens of bridges over little streams, flowing creeks or big rumbling rivers. It was harder to walk a big distance, but after about 6 hours of walk we arrived to the second hut, weary and content.

The third day was only 14km, but was over an 1152m saddle, to which we had to climb from 250m, from the hut. The weather was cloudy, but not raining, making it a perfect weather to walk in, even if not for picture taking. The climb took us 2 hours, panting and stopping every once in a while to grab a breath of air.

Many places along the path were under a danger of rock avalanche, and so we made it step by step on the hillside.
When we got to the top, a monument for the guy discovering the passage stood hilltop, and when the clouds had scattered a bit, we could see amazing panoramic views of the lakes and fiords around. After a short break, the road took a turn downhill, and we started descending steeply.

After a knee breaking descent, we arrived to valley bottom height, and made our way through even denser rain forest, with evergreen trees, stretching long furry branches over our heads. After another 2 hours, we arrived to a shelter, where we left our bags and went on an hour’s side trek to the highest waterfall in New Zealand. The waterfall, 586m in height, is amazingly impressive and huge amounts of water flow over 3 steps of rocks, shattering the water into a white spray.

We went back to the shelter, and kept on going for another hour or so, until we arrived to the final hut. A small swimming hole was 3 minutes walk from the hut, so dad and I decided to have a quick shower in the freezing lake waters, which was the best decision I made all day.

The last day of the trek was 18km easy peasy walk alongside the river to the end point, and at last we got the perfect weather! The walk was nice, but was mainly about getting there, as most last days on treks are, so after about 5 hours of walking, we finally arrived to the end point. The ferry made it’s way from the end point to the same place in Milford Sound small town we had driven to a few days before, through the amazing fiord of the Milford Sounds. The skies were the bluest I have ever seen, and the 15 minutes ferry ended way too early to fully appreciate the sublime beauty this area has to offer.

We went on the bus back to Te Anau Downs, where my car was parked, and started the long way back to Queenstown.
We woke up in Queenstown, at a beautiful residential hostel, ran by an old kiwi couple. It was my parent’s last day in NZ, as their flight was due in the morning of the next day, which meant driving to all the way to Christchurch that day. We decided to stop at Mount Cook, which is the highest mountain in NZ, and went on a small 90 minutes walk to overlook the mountain ridge from a nice hill around it. We continued to Christchurch, and after a nice dinner in town, we went to sleep.

6 am. Drowsy, I force myself off bed, and put my pants on. I walk out of the room; my parents are already dressed and packed, the taxi already waiting outside. I give them both hugs, close the door after them, and climb back to bed.

10 am. I wake up as from a dream. Alone again.

The 2 weeks with my parents have been magical. I couldn’t have imagined a better experience for us, and only a few people I know can boast about feeling so close to their parents and sharing such a special adventure with them. At one point my mom asked me what new thing I learnt about them, that I didn’t already know. I couldn’t answer then, but now I know that it’s not a new astonishing fact I didn’t know about them - it was all about having a great time together, seeing places and doing things together, building up and accumulating memories, memories that will be with me for as long as I live.

Before my parents came, I scheduled a whole week with rob, after they leave. He had just finished a 2 weeks cruise with his friend, which coincided perfectly with my plans. I met rob in city centre, and we went to eat breakfast, the same way we have been doing for a month before my parents came. That evening we had planned to go to a rugby match, so reluctant to sit and write my blog post, I spent the day posting adverts in notice boards about my car, trying to sell it before taking a bus to Queenstown, to do the Routeburn trek.

Luckily, the whole sale turned out easier than I though, and after a few calls and one weird guy coming to see it ? my car was sold for a price of 400 dollars less than I bought it for.

Rugby is an amazing game. I learnt to appreciate it when I first came to NZ, sitting aimlessly in the common room in Auckland, staring at the TV trying to understand the rules. There are a few sports as exciting and as tough as Rugby, and the game is held at such exhilarating pace, that if you blink, you miss a great move. The guys playing the game are giants, athletes in a different standard to what we know. Playing basketball, and knowing the aggressiveness the game can reach to, only makes it more amazing for me to imagine the hits these guys get, and wonder how can they not injure themselves on every match. The funniest thing about the game, is when someone do get injured, the game doesn't stop. The players keep on playing when their friend is holding his broken knee, or picking up his eye from the floor...

The game was much anticipated for me, as it was the first rugby match I was going to see live. It was between the international team of Christchurch, and a team from South Africa.

We came to the stadium 30 minutes before the game began, to find a half empty stand, and as the game began, only about 10,000 people were around, dead quiet. The atmosphere reminded me of the NBA game I’ve seen - amazing athletes, but the game is the last thing the crowd finds interesting. Cheerleaders, Knights on horses, fire, trumpets and a whole lot of hot air to keep the crowd focused. While the players were warming up on the field, there was a pie eating contest in the middle of the field, which the winner of the contest received a year round supply of beer.

The game started in bright colours, when a small guy who looks like a mini bar scored after 10 minutes, and then the opposition substituted a refrigirator with a safe who also scored, but the rest of the game was pretty much a bore, which was a disappointment for us. Still, it was a nice experience, and I bet this game has a lot more into it than what I saw on the pitch.

The next day we took the bus to Queenstown, in order to go on the 3 days Routeburn trek. We arrived after an excruciating 9 hours bus ride, rented a tent, and went out to meet some people we know who are still here.

The next day we took the early bus to Glenorchy, from which we started the track. The forecast was miserable, predicting 3 days of pouring rain.
On the first day, we had only 6km to cross, which took us about 90 minutes, a nice walk through bush forest, reminding the Milford trek. The weather was surprisingly good, and we camped at an open field campsite, and ate lunch. We found ourselves at 12:00, with nothing to do all day. So we went to sleep.

After 6 hours of sleep, we woke up and made dinner. At 18:30 we found ourselves with nothing to do. So we went to sleep. Tent was really good, with 2 terraces for the gear to remain dry, if rain should fall.At 3:00am, rain started to fall. It was one of the loudest rain I’ve heard in my life. I forced myself back to sleep.

At about 7:00 I hear rob mumbling from under the covers: “dude, I think you didn’t close the terrace...”.

Apparently, as I entered the tent last night, I forgot to zip the terrace after me, leaving my boots out in the open air, out in the open rain. When the guys at “Salomon” say it is waterproof, they didn’t mean that water can’t enter from the top, unfortunately for me.

That day we had to cross 14km, over a saddle higher 1200 meters from where we camped. We started walking in the pouring rain, every bone of our bodies getting drenched.

We were climbing uphill in the narrow path incurved in stone, making the path itself a small river of water flowing down. The whole way up we were walking in 30cm of water, sometimes even knee high. That was one of the hardest walk I took. On the way up we had to cross many streams and creeks, which over flooded into an enormous amount of water. I have never seen so much water.

After 2 hours climbing, we got to the top of the saddle, and hid in a shelter for 5 minutes.

This was roughly the conversation in the shelter:

Rob: “let’s stay here a while... or do you want to storm it, and just get there?”

Me: “let’s just storm it, I’m completely drenched”.

Rob: “let’s stay a while... It’s not that cold as long as your shoes are dry”.

Me: “dude, my shoes weren’t even dry when we started walking this morning”.

Rob: “well, as long as your shirt is dry under the waterproof, you’ll be alright”.

Me: “it’s completely socking wet”.

Rob: “hmm... well, as long as your boxer shorts are dry?”

Me: “I’m not wearing any boxers...”.

Rob: “Let’s go then”.

So we kept on rampaging in what seemed to be the end of the world. The wind on the mountain top was ferocious, at speed of up to 100km/h.

If you want to better understand how we felt, you should take a car with a sunroof, have your friend drive it at 100km/h, stick your upper body out the sunroof, and put on a 19kg rucksack. Yep, that’ll do.

We started our descent, and now the water was pulling us down in the walking path, instead of resisting. The whole mountain was dripping water, makes it seem like it’s crying, and let me tell you, we were crying with it.

After another 2 hours knee bashing, we were at the hut. Many distraught faces were around the fireplace that night. The warden said it rained 300mm in 9 hours, making it a normal amount for the season.

The walk was amazing. Although we couldn’t get one picture of the view, because I didn’t want to risk the camera, and actually, we didn’t get to see much view, since visibility was, what is in professional term is, “Shit”, it was one of the most challenging days of my life.

The next day we decided to sleep in late, and leave only when we have just enough time to storm the trail and get there in time for the bus back to Queenstown. We delayed our breakfast as much as we could, and when it was 30 minutes past “we will never make it”, we got our (still wet) gear on, and stormed the trek. We got there 10 minutes before the bus left, and slept all the sweet way back to Queenstown.

The trek was amazing. It was a different experience than what I was expecting, but altogether a challenging adventure, which was more than I thought we’ll get.

The next day we were chilling out in Queenstown, meeting friends and wasting time, and as promised, I took rob to the same restaurant I was with my parents (“Flame”), and we had another meal to remember.

The following day we took the bus to Christchurch. It was a nice day, after 3 days of terrible weather all across the south island. I’ve taken the road from Queenstown to Christchurch 5 times before, but I have never pictured it looking even remotely like it was that day. After climbing for a bit, ALL the mountains around us were covered in snow. I’m not talking about far in the distance - the mountains through which the narrow road was winding, started at scattered snow, than fuller, then completely covered with deep which shiny snow.

We stopped for a quick break at Lake Tekapo, a place I’ve driven through so many times before, and it was absolutely spectacular. I went off the bus, and ran to the lakeside to take pictures of the lake and the surrounding mountains. This ride was one of the prettiest I’ve been on my while life.
Back in Christchurch we concluded that even though the rugby was a disappointment, and the weather on the trek was terrible, the past week was amazing, and we are very glad for making it.

In two days I am flying to Fiji for 2 weeks, and then to the Cook Island, and then to Australia.That’s the plan for now… :)

A Final Thought

Two shots of “home” please...

Before my parents came here, my brother, who travelled with them before in Central America, told me to be ready. He said that the most unexpected thing about them coming is the void they leave when they are gone, because when you are leaving home the first time, you are full of ambition to travel and experience things, so that energy keeps you going through the hard times and home sickness. They bring so much of home with them, he said, that when they leave, you have to find the energy to “start” travelling again, but that’s already after you’ve done that one. And that’s hard.The days after their departure I didn’t feel nothing of the above. I was full of positive energy about the trek, and about my plans of Fiji and Australia. But these last few days, I understand what all the fuss was about. It is hard to pull yourself together again, especially as I already miss everyone back home. When I was home I was expecting the trip so much, and now I can hardly wait to return.With that said, I still plan on staying here at least until the end of May, as planned. I know that after the hype of returning home will quiet down, I will wish I would have stayed longer.

Have a good time, and keep in touch

Sivan.