Three weeks of driving, fishing, hiking, site seeing, rain, sun, smelly clothes, wet shoes, and sleeping in a van have finally ended and back to the shearing sheds we go. Our trip started out leaving Alexandra on March 4th and headed straight for Queenstown for a few supplies. My hiking pants were ripped, my headlamp was missing, and Tony needed to buy some more maps (you should see the pile of these we are starting!). We camped at a quite campground near town, Moke Lakes, where we enjoyed our first night of sleeping in our 1996 Honda Odyssey. Instead of making the full investment of building a bed frame, buying a mattress, and designing storage cubby’s we just took the short route. All of the back seats are in a our storage unit in Nelson, so the van is quite roomy. We purchased a relatively cheap foam twin mattress from the local store and plopped it in the back of the van between the front seats and the cooler. Then we made the bed up with our sheets, blankets, pillows, and plopped all of our bags and belongings around it. Therefore every evening we were done driving we had a streamlined routine of moving our bags to their designated spots in the front seat, leaving us a very cozy bed in the back. These tight quarters at least gave us more shelter from the wind and cold nights than the faithful tent (which now has some duct tape poles) and enough room to sit and play cards on the rainy nights.
After our brief Queenstown camping trip we headed to the Mataura River near the Nokomai Station. Since we had worked with this ranches sheep, they were nice enough to let us camp along their river for a few nights and do some fishing on private property. Tony caught some nice brown trout and I caught up on my reading and knitting. So far I have been able to read a variety of books including a collection of Oscar Wilde’s stories and plays, the Lord of the Ring’s Trilogy, the Hunger Games Trilogy, The Hobbit (again), The Great Gatsby (again), Committed (the Eat, Pray, Love sequel), and currently am working on the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, which I feel will last me a good long while. We would have liked to stay a few more nights but were anxious to see what the rest of our trip held, so our next stop was the Mavora Lakes on the other side of Queenstown. This was a pretty campground, but the rivers were quite low, so after one night we made our way to the much awaited Fiordland National Park.
We stopped off in Te Anau for some groceries, petrol, and more maps (I think Tony has a map hoarding problem!) This national park finally made me feel what all the tourists who come to Yellowstone must feel, completely overwhelmed. I found myself at the visitor center asking the age old question, “we have 1 week, what all should we see,” luckily they were prepared for this and gave us some helpful info. The difference between YNP and Fiordland is that Fiordland is actually bigger, but there are less roads, less conveniences, less lodging, and way more tours. We started out on the Milford Road, which is a scenic road which dead ends at Milford Sounds. This road is speckled with campgrounds, a few good look outs, the start to many “great walks” (multi-day hikes), hundreds of tourist buses, and beautiful native bush (forest). Our campground for the night was along the Englington River and was the first night we could have a real live campfire in New Zealand, a much missed activity. Since we had been eagerly anticipating this, we were prepared with actual food instead of Ramen noodles. Our dinner consisted of delicious foil packets with chicken, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and onions, with a side of corn on the cob. Sleeping in the van was not so bad with our bellies full of that good food. The next day we made our way to the Hollyford Road where Tony caught some more fish and I took in the gorgeous scenery with snow capped mountains and boulder filled aqua colored rivers. We barely found a campground that Saturday night as it is high tourist season. March is the one of the best months to visit, as they get less rain, which is a good thing since the yearly rainfall average is nearly 20 feet. Sunday morning we finally set out to do part of the Hollyford Track. I spoke of this track previously and how expensive it is to hike in full, so we decided to just hike in part of the way and back out, rather than hiring a helicopter and all. We made our camp about 2.5 hours in near the Hidden Falls hut and pitched our tent instead of purchasing tickets for the hut, as you are able to set up a tent legally as long as it is 500 meters from the trail and hut. Our view was indeed grand with glacier covered mountains and a crystal clear stream. Then came the sand flies. After Tony came back from catching his first NZ sea run brown trout, I had set up our new Marmot 2 man tent, which we purchased for the specific reason that you can sit up inside unlike my previous tent which forces you to lay down constantly. I quickly made some baked Ramon Noodles and Tony grabbed an apple and we scrambled into the tent. There were thousands of these little black flies fighting with one another to drink our American blood. Luckily our new tent did the trick and we just sat in awe of the flies and played gin rummy until their buzzing sound died down enough that we could sleep. The next day we packed up and made our way out. I had a blister the size of a half dollar and the sand flies were enough to drive any person simply mad. Tony fished on the Hollyford River some more, and caught a 6.5 lb trout while I was booking our campsite at the “Gunn Camp.” It was one big trout that will live in his memory forever, luckily he managed to get a few pics even without his photographer. The Gunn camp is an entirely different world even though it is only 9 kilometers off the main road, but a good 1.5 hours from a moderately normal town. This camp was originally a camp for road workers building the Milford Road prior to WWII and was rediscovered sometime in the 1960’s (I think). If someone says you can’t live off the grid, you haven’t been here. This place offered campsites, cabins, hot showers, power outlets, and a kitchen being entirely off the grid. They had a “refrigerator” rigged from a hillside spring, a wood burning hot water heater, and a nice large kitchen for the campers running off gas. To provide electricity and power charging stations, they ran a generator from 6p-10p every night. They also had a little convenience store, a museum, and oddities a plenty, but they didn’t take credit cards because they would have to get the internet, which means power would be involved. It truly was a neat little place and did have really hot showers.
The next morning, Tuesday, we got up early and drove to Milford Sounds. This is a wee village that has a restaurant, a backpackers lodge, no phone service, and a afternoon cruise ships galore. People come from all over the world come to see Milford Sounds and the only way is by boat. It is actually a “fiord” which is a glacier carved waterway that runs into the Tasman Sea surrounded by jungle covered mountains and waterfalls. We decided we had to take part in this event and splurged on an afternoon cruise, buffet, and visit to the underwater discovery center. It was a sunny day and the views were phenomenal, but since it is one of the driest years they have had the waterfalls were smaller than usual, but still worth it. The underwater center is a big tank that you go into and view the lake under water, essentially it is like a backwards fish tank, and really an amazing concept. After our tourist extravaganza it was over to the Cleddau River where Tony caught several nice trout, despite the low water. We stopped on the way back to view the rock formations carved out over thousands of years and gazed at the surrounding mountains and even saw a few pesky Kea birds looking for some mischief. They are similar to our ravens when it comes to trouble making. Our last night camping in Milford included us pulling everything out of the van and reorganizing piece by piece. The last thing you want when sleeping in the van is to get too cluttered, which is just really impossible if you ask me.
