kyie is always right

last night we arrived in little marahau on the edge of abel tasman national park on the north tip of the south island of new zealand. we have been working our way up from fiordland in the south. in my zeal to inform you about our time in doubtful sound last post i skipped over some wonderful things kylie and i saw in between.

kylie already mentioned me biking in queenstown. it was fun to get on a bike again, and great to have lift accessed trails, but the trails werent particularly technical or interesting, except for the first 30 sec of the downhill track. actually, as it rained all afternoon the intermediate run got pretty fun in the mud towards the end.

after queenstown we ventured up over the crown ranges to wanaka, were we did a short day hike up iron mountain (picture above is of wanaka from the top) and a long day hike out to see rob roy glacier. i also went for a nice swim in lake wanaka, made friends with 2 10 year old british girls named laurel and riana (and then pulled their father's sailboat clear of the swimming buoys (boat pictured)).
laurel and riana and i became friends after i informed them they had beaten me in a secret race... turns out they were racing me as well and they were ecstatic.

i collected some water from the stream directly at the base of rob roy glacier. i was looking at it and thinking it looked a bit grey and cloudy and then thought to myself, "i guess that's all the minerals coming off the glacier... hey... its mineral water!" i dont know the concentrations of the various solutes but i do know that it tasted amazing.



after checking out rob roy we returned south to fiordland and my favourite camping spot, deer flats. it was a bit cloudier this time, but we still had the entire campground to ourselves.

after that it was time to kayak on doubtful sound, detailed in the previous post.

after kayaking, we made our slow way back up the south island, stopping to see all the waterfalls and scenic lookouts along the way. we camped on the northern tip of lake wanaka at another DOC campground and went for a nice walk on the lake just at sunset.

the next day we stopped at franz josef to go for a guided hike on the glacier, but we were rained out, so we continued on to punakaiki, home of the pancake rocks and some sweet blowholes.

i didnt expect too much from these blowholes, but when the waves hit the rocks at high tide it forces a huge gout of air and water out of some cracks in the rocks and puts on a spectacular show. every good solid spray would warm my heart. kylie and i found ourselves laughing and high fiving eachother after a particularly powerful burst, just as if our favourite sports hero had just slam dunked. for some reason it just made us happy. high tide was at night so we didnt get any blowhole shots, but these are the pancake rocks and this is a picture of a nonblowing blowhole.

from punakaiki (get it - panacaky) we drove along an impressive coastal highway and then turned inland to nelson lakes national park where i wanted to take one more chance to get into the alpine before leaving the south island. i chose a climb to a ridge walk to angeles lake where we would stay at the angeles hut before making our way back down the speargrass valley the next day.

kylie was a bit nervous about the ridge walk, but i knew she was strong enough, and the parks lady assured her that if she had done avalanche peak (which we climbed with julie and lowell) she could easily do the ridgewalk.

the intial hike was beautiful, but things got ugly halfway into the ridge when we became socked in and spent a lot of our time exposed to buffeting winds and pelting rain while hopping from boulder to boulder across a seemingly neverending spine disappearing into the fog.

kylie was not happy with my choice of activity, but she did it, and in good time no less.

angeles hut in the morning

the hut was crowded and we had to sleep on the floor under the table, but it was warm and dry and we met some friendly israeli girls who we hiked down with. the next day was sunny with only a few patches of rain.
we descended this valley, but we walked the ridge on the right the day before in the cloud.

yay for sunshine!

kylie got pretty muddy by trusting her waterproof boots... i managed to avoid the worst of it in order to protect my running shoes.

at the bottom, trusty gus started right up and took us out to the coast where we ate a huge meal and fell into a deep sleep, only to be awakened by the sunrise over the ocean this morning. today was spent doing laundry and drying our clothes and cleaning our camper, with a quick hike to a nice beach for good measure.

tomorrow we have rented a kayak for 2 days so it is back to the water to explore the beaches and rocky coastline of abel tasman national park. this is one of our last stops on the south island and we are beginning to have some separation anxiety... so much to see and do!