Happy Easter!

I know I’m not keeping up with my New Year’s resolution to blog twice a week, but we have just been too busy to waste hours in internet cafes! We’ve just got a month left here, and I will enjoy every bit of it, even if that means the blog going down the tubes.

When I last wrote, we were heading off to Golden Bay, a gorgeous bay on the northwest edge of the South Island. Golden Bay is known for its beaches, and its laid-back lifestyle and homegrown produce. It has a bit of a reputation in NZ for being eco-friendly – lots of cafes selling organic this and that – as well as being an artist community. We arrived first in Takaka, an adorable little “hippie” town, that consisted of one main street with shops and cafes and long-skirted, dread-headed folks wandering about. In towns like this (and I’ve come across them back home, too), you just get a sense that people care about the town itself. Takaka’s public bathroom (every town here has one – usually they’re decently clean, but spartan and sterile smelling) had been painted a bright orange color on the outside, with Men and Women written in an appealing cursive, and bubbly figures dancing across the walls. There was a bar of nice smelling hand-soap by the sinks. It’s such small stuff, but it makes an impression. Somebody out there is doing this stuff themselves – or else the whole community really does care so much that they budget in art work on the public bathroom. It’s a nice touch.

Anyway, we spent a couple days wandering around Golden Bay, and then headed out for a couple days on the Abel Tasman Track. The Abel Tasman is a Great Walk. There are something like nine Great Walks in New Zealand, and the designation basically means that it’s accessible to anyone who is decently fit. The designation also implies that the huts cost $45 per night to stay in, and that the track will be fairly crowded. For the record, a single person can stay in a dorm room in a hostel here, with sheets and pillows and blankets, and access to all the comforts of the hostel (kitchen, kitchen utensils, shower, television, etcetera), for around $22 per night. At a Great Walk hut, you get a shelter from the elements, a thin mattress upon which you can throw your own sleeping bag, flush toilets, and a cooking stove. For twice as much as a bed in a hostel! It’s an unbelievable rip-off, and I get really steamed about this, so let’s not get started.

Suffice it to say that Bjorn and I have avoided the Great Walks as much as possible. They’re highly trafficked, and it’s simply annoying to have to spend so much money trying to enjoy the great outdoors. The Abel Tasman, however, is probably the most popular of all tramps in NZ – Great or otherwise – and boasts spectacular beach scenery and a warm climate. I was going to have a hard time leaving NZ without having at least seen Abel Tasman, so we decided just go out onto it for two days and one night of camping. I’m really glad we went because the beaches were awesome, and, by going in early April, we missed the worst of the summer tourist season crowds. The track goes from lush rainforest to perfect beaches, so you spend a good bit of time actually walking down the beaches. Definitely a change of scenery from the sub-alpine conditions further south!

The beaches of Abel Tasman are exquisite. The water is calm and is of a vivid blue color that I have never seen before, and it rolls gently up to dark gold sands. The blues and the golds, against the deep, green hills of the rainforest – it’s just beautiful.

From Abel Tasman, we cruised east along the northernmost part of the South Island, which is famous for its fruit orchards and vineyards. The orchards are incredible to look at out your window, as you’re driving along. It’s a ridiculous thing, but I’m not certain I’ve laid my eyes upon a real apple tree before passing through the apple orchards of this area. And even if I have seen one before, I’ve certainly never seen a SEA of apple trees – short, delicate, leafy beings bearing perfect red ornaments. “LOOK!” I exclaimed as we passed the first orchard. “There are APPLES!” Endless apples. And pears. And cherries. And kiwifruit. It’s incredible.

Even more incredible is this honesty system they have at some of the orchards. They’ll bag up a bunch of their extra produce, put price tags on it, and set it in a little shack down by the road, with an “honesty box” pay system. We stopped by one and picked up one huge bag of apples and one of pears for $2 each. Unbelievable! And not a soul was there. Trust is such an amazing thing…when it works.

We crossed all the way over to the eastern side of the South Island to the Marlborough Wine Region, famous for its Sauvignon Blancs. We hadn’t done any real wine tasting since arriving in NZ and were eager to get going! We had booked a hostel in a little town called Renwick, right in the middle of it all. The hostel was perfect – such a treat after two whole weeks in the tent – and they even had bikes for rent…for touring the vineyards. The land is so flat, and the vineyards are all so close together that cycling around is a perfect option for touring!

And tour we did. We went out on our bikes around 10 AM and returned around 5 PM, after visiting eight vineyards and one chocolate factory. We probably tasted at least 5 different wines at each vineyard, and well, those tastings start adding up after a while. But they’re onto something – riding around wine country, warm with wine, on a beautiful day. I’m not sure it gets any better. It was SUCH fun. Exhausting, but great. I’m not sure that hitting eight vineyards in a row is really the best way to taste wine. We found ourselves getting more and more profound as the day wore on. Taking a sip, putting on your most thoughtful face, and exclaiming, “Oh, yes! That’s just LOVEly. Reminds me of…smoke, coffee grounds, rose petals.” Good grief.

After ridding our systems of wine, we headed on to Picton to catch the ferry to the North Island. When we took the ferry across the Cook Straight from Wellington to Picton 7 months ago, it was a lovely, three hour ride – a peaceful cruise. Well, this time was not so lovely. The waters of the Cook Straight were insane that day (though the ferry people called them “moderate”), throwing the boat this way and that and splashing huge waves of water onto the decks. The ferry isn’t a little ship, either. It’s probably the size of small cruise ships, with lots of area to wander around, a cinema, cafes, and tons of parking for cars. So I was shocked to find, thirty minutes into the ride, that I was about to get seriously seasick. And so was just about everybody else on the boat.

When I started feeling queasy, we went out to sit in a large atrium area, next to the doors out to the viewing decks, hoping that a little fresh air would be good. Well, within about 20 minutes, the room was FULL of people, vomiting into white paper bags, hyperventilating, crying, and generally freaking out. The ferry staff went around calmly with big garbage bags, collecting the smaller paper bags from people and passing around ice (apparently sucking on ice keeps the sickies away). It was mass chaos for the middle two hours of the three hour journey. I fought with everything in me – sucking on ice, staring out at the horizon line – to not get sick and managed to avoid it. But yuck! It was just awful. I was thoroughly relieved to be on solid ground in Wellington.

So here we are! We’re back on the North Island, with just under four weeks left before our departure on May 8.

We had planned to do a four day trek around Mount Taranaki, a volcano on the western side of the North Island, but a cold snap recently struck and covered the mountains with snow and ice! Tramping in the snow and ice? No, thank you. So we continued to drive east yesterday, finally ending at Tongariro National Park, where we did a one day trek today (weather conditions were much better there). The Tongariro Crossing is an extremely popular day hike, but we figured it would be fine at this time of year. What we didn’t consider is that we had selected the Saturday of Easter weekend to do this hike, and as we were told by a tour guide earlier today, that’s the busiest day of the year!

We arrived at the trailhead and were BAFFLED by the numbers of people. Hundreds of people were milling about the parking lot, being dropped off by tour bus after tour bus. We set off walking around 8:30 AM, and were quite literally in a line on the trail for the first three hours. I felt like I was back in New York City, having a fit of walking road rage at the slow pokes ahead of me. MOVE it, people! We didn’t have ten feet of space in front of or behind us, and as far as the eyes could see up and down the trail were PEOPLE! It was incredible. I don’t hardly have anything to say about the hike itself because the sheer spectacle of the whole thing was much more interesting.

It was a nice walk, but we’ve done nicer. I’ll put pictures up next time (next time!).

Okay. We are off into the woods tomorrow for four days. Doing a tramp in Te Urewera National Park on the eastern side of the island. There ought to be very few people there. Fingers crossed.

Must go now. There’s a movie on in the lounge at our holiday park. Happy Easter, everyone! Much love to you all.