Our camper is basically a van like those old 80's VW buses that has been gutted and outfitted with two benches for beds, a sink and faucet, a mini fridge cooler, a portable stove, and a solar shower bag (which we probably won't use because it's sketchy). The van is from Road Runner Rentals and has stickers all over it of the cartoon characters Wiley Coyote and Road Runner (my favorites)!
At 7 this morning, Kearse and I left in our van from Christchurch and headed toward Mount Cook. We'd heard that camper vans or rental cars are the best ways to get around New Zealand, rather than flying or booking a bus tour, and it's totally true. There's such a feeling of freedom and empowerment when driving across the island on your own. You can pick the cities and sites you want to visit, pullover on the side of the road when there's a good photo opp, and you do not have to worry about booking a hostel for the night (though it is nice to camp at an official site with restroom facilities and, cross your fingers, some showers).
However, the best part about renting a camper van is driving on the left hand side of the road! It's exciting, but oh so confusing. I haven't gotten behind the wheel yet, but I plan to drive a few times. Kearse will be the primary driver, and I the navigator. The steering wheel is on the right hand side of the car, and it's funny to enter the car on the opposite side. The blinker signals and windshield wipers are also on the opposite sides of the steering wheel than in the States, and it's quite hilarious when Kearse means to signal but turns on the wipers instead. It's a tough habit to break.
But luckily he's been able to break the driving on the right-hand-side-of-the-road habit easily. It's tricky puling up to an intersection where your left-hand turn is with traffic and your right-hand turn is across traffic. Parallel parking is opposite (you park with the left side of the vehicle to the curb), and you go through the roundabouts in a clockwise direction rather than counterclockwise. Also, don't forget to give others the "left" of way!
We drove a total of 6 hours through a very rich agricultural region to get to Mount Cook, plus our stops along the way. First we drove through irrigated fields with God knows what vegetables growing to get to the small town of Geraldine. It was an adorable town surrounded by pastures of black and white spotted cows and sheep that are sheared for their Morino wool. We even passed a pasture full of deer, alpacas, and Clydesdale horses! I definitely need to get a picture with an alpaca! During our stop in Geraldine, we perused a town yard sale that was raising money for the town history museum. We purchased three old school CDs to keep us entertained on the drive (the radio signal is painfully inconsistent). The CDs are Pop Hits from 2004, The 33rd CMA Awards Collection, and British Pub Songs, good times! I even happened along a country market where I got to sample tart cherry pie!After Geraldine, we cruised through a series of three valleys: Gapes Valley, Beautiful Valley, and Cattle Valley. Imagine the view- rolling hills of varying shades of green, dotted with grazing sheep and cows, with snow-capped peaks in the background slicing the sky. It was beautiful! Let's just say I had my camera in hand the whole way!
We cruised right through the even smaller town of Fairlie (the gateway to MacKenzie country) and through Burkes Pass to arrive at our lunch stop- Lake Tekapo, a huge natural lake carved out by glaciers and filled with freezing turquoise glacier water. We enjoyed making Aussie-style sandwiches by the lake for lunch (sliced spicy pork, tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocado on multigrain bread, yum)! We then stopped by the famous Church of the Good Shepard, a quaint little stone church that has overlooked Lake Tekapo since 1935.
Near Lake Tekapo we drove to the top of Mount John to visit the Mount John Observatory. It's the southern-most observatory in the world! While at the clinic in Christchurch, I read an article about this observatory. The astronomers here are searching for planets orbiting the binary star Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star to Earth at 4 light years away. They believe that if we find a planet at Alpha Centauri, then the planet is more likely to have sustained life than not have sustained life. Apparently since Alpha Centauri is a binary star (two stars revolving around each other), the "Habitable Zone" between the stars is larger than the inhabitable zone, thus increasing the probability of a finding life on another planet. The Mount Cook observatory is the only observatory in the world that can monitor Alpha Centauri year-round because it is so far south. Alpha Centauri never dips below the horizon here!
In addition to marveling at the huge telescopes, we enjoyed a 360 degree view of the MacKensie Region of New Zealand! We also met a local NZ couple (who used to live in Romania and Australia), who told me that my American accent was beautiful :) It's not everyday you hear that while traveling abroad!
In the afternoon, we drove through Simon's Pass to Lake Pukaki, the snow capped mountains in the background making it even more beautiful than Lake Tekapo! Lake Pukaki is fed from the north by rivers of melted glacier from the mountains, and the rivers flowing out of Lake Pukaki from the south are the home to the world's highest salmon farm!
We drove north along the length of Lake Pukaki to reach Aoraki/Mount Cook, passing by the Glentanner Park Centre where you can ride a helicopter for a scenic view of Mount Cook and her stunning glaciers. Mount Cook is called Aoraki by the native Maori people, which means Cloud in the Sky. This name is fitting as Mount Cook is Australasia's tallest mountain, towering above the Southern Alps at 3754 meters. Australasia, also known as Oceania, is made up of Australia, New Zealand, and the surrounding Polynesian and Micronesian islands.
After parking at White Horse Hill Campsite at the foot of Mount Cook, Kearse and I embarked on the Hooker Valley Track- a three hour tramp up to the base of the Hooker Glacier and back (the New Zealanders refer to hiking as "tramping"). What an incredible tramp!
The trail was rough, rocky, and unstable the whole way. I think I managed to have only a couple hundred sure steps during the entire hike. As we picked our way through the volcanic terrain and hopped from boulder to boulder along the glacial river where the trail disappeared, we were buffeted by a strong and cold wind. There were numerous times that I was nearly knocked from my feet! I think that if I would have jumped straight up, I would have been displaced about a foot by the wind. There were two cable bridges during the hike, both two feet wide and spanning across the rapid cloudy white river. Approaching the bridges, you could see them bouncing due to the wind. There are no words to describe crossing those bridges. The worst of course was reaching the middle where you're suspended 15 meters above the rushing water, with the bridge bouncing up and down below you, with the strongest wind at your side trying to through you over the waist high railing. No fun. All I could think was... I have to go back over these on the return trip!
Despite the weather conditions (which in retrospect made the hike way more interesting), the scenery was just incredible. It literally looked like the mountains had exploded out of the ocean in an unorganized frenzy. There were several times I would take a break from picking my way along the rocks to glance up at the snow capped mountains around us, with the ice blue glaciers hugging the rock faces, waterfalls of glacier runoff sliding down the sides, and gray rain clouds swirling above the peaks. With the cloudy white rapids to our side, the lake of white water at the base of the mountains, and the wind ripping through the tall grass all around us, I definitely felt like I was somewhere rare and unique. I hate to use this comparison, but I can find few other words to describe it- I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings. There is truly no other place like this on earth.
The destination of the track was the base of Hooker Glacier. We traversed a rock cliff to stand on the rocky shore of a cloudy white lake of glacier water, and the icy blue base of Hooker Glacier gaped at the far end of the lake. The top of the glacier was covered with gray and black dirt (matching the color of the beach we were standing on), that stretched about half way up the glacier until the white and blue ice that showed through near Mount Cook's peak. What a great reward for such a tricky hike :)
By the time we arrived back at camp, it was raining. We retreated with our portable cooking stove and food into the kitchen to cook dinner- chicken, potatoes, and red bell peppers. It sounds nice I suppose, but we were too hungry to wait for the potatoes to cook (even though I cut them really small), so we ate them half raw. W had enough chicken for three dinners, but while we had the stove fired up, we went ahead and cooked all of it. Haha then the plastic knobs on the stove melted off, and the gas can got stuck inside. We had three guys working on fixing the stove by the time Kearse decided to trash the thing. At least we cooked all of our chicken!
We went to sleep in our camper van, listening to the pouring rain outside. Around 2am the winds got so strong that they were knocking our van from side to side. I was legitimately scared that the storm was going to knock our van over. Not only that, but the sheer sound of the howling wind alone was enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night. (In fact, during the night a tree fell on the camper van two down from ours).
Luckily in the morning we were greeted by a light pink sunrise over the mountains and the soft pitter patter of the rain remaining from the night's storm. We left the rainy Mount Cook valley by 7am and drove toward the blue sky over the nearby town of Twizel.
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